Headlights Look Like Diamonds
by i-am-hiding
Summary: Stiles Stilinski and Mallory Durant like solving puzzles, which is good since Scott McCall needs help navigating high school around one significant problem: he turns into a werewolf. Trying to pretend they're anywhere near normal isn't easy for these three friends, and it's not exactly a bonus that Mallory's in love with Stiles. Considering she doesn't even know it yet.
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: I do not own Teen Wolf or any of its characters. They belong to MTV and the virtuoso – infuriating as he can be – that is Jeff Davis. I just own my OCs (although you can't really "own" a person, but you get the point.)

* * *

><p><strong>Prologue<strong>

Five-year-old Mallory Kosta didn't want to miss her first day of kindergarten in a new town, but she had to. Not because she was sick or even remotely nervous, but because her parents had just gotten into a monumental fight over her. She was eavesdropping behind the open door to her father's study when she caught the tail end of their heated conversation.

"I won't lie to her, Elaine! She needs to know what's going on!" her dad hissed, hands planted firmly on his hips.

"I'm not asking you to lie, Hektor! I'm asking you to just – just not – say anything!" Elaine snapped, struggling to properly articulate her thoughts to her husband.

"You mean _lie _by omission," he said with a vicious scoff. "I will not keep secrets from my own child!"

"You act like she isn't mine, too! Do you think anything good can possibly come from telling her? She's five years old! Why are you _trying _to hurt her when you claim to love her so damn much?"

Hektor's eyes widened almost menacingly, and he momentarily looked like he'd been slapped. "Get. Out," he growled five seconds later, after composing himself.

Elaine grit her teeth in exasperation but stormed out of the room, fiercely muttering to herself and too livid to notice her inquisitive child kneeling by the doorway.

Mallory wasn't allowed to go into Hektor's study, but she didn't care much for house rules at that moment. She tiptoed through the dimly lit room, where her father was slumped in his large, dark brown leather chair with his head in his hands and his back to the door. Standing cautiously a few feet away, she murmured, "Papa, I won't go if you're afraid."

Hektor straightened up and swiveled in his chair, taken aback by her quiet arrival. The normally rambunctious girl had somehow become light on her feet.

"What?" he asked, uncertain about what she'd heard but quite cruelly hoping it was everything.

Mallory hopped up onto his lap and snuggled against him, her palm pressed to his chest. His heart was beating furiously but immediately slowed down at his daughter's touch. Appalled, he jerked away from her; frankly, the only thing he was afraid of was her hands. But at the puzzled look on her face, he stood her on the ground and settled on holding her arms down at her sides.

"You're scared of me going to school, right?" she pried gently.

Frustrated, Hektor opened his mouth to disagree but then decided that perhaps now wasn't the right time. She was clearly still too naïve to understand much about anything, let alone what had been plaguing him for weeks. He'd just have to wait awhile.

"Yeah, Mallory. I'm – afraid. I don't want you to go," he said instead, which wasn't entirely true. It was a bad idea to let her leave the house for any reason whatsoever, but he didn't exactly want to be around her either. Especially since he had nowhere to escape to; he wouldn't be starting work until the next day.

"Then I'll stay here with you," Mallory offered generously. Kindergarten wasn't worth his unhappiness, and she'd honestly have done anything for her dad.

When Elaine found out her husband had prevented their daughter from going to school that day, she was outraged. The next morning, she hurried a bewildered Mallory out of the house and drove her to Beacon Hills Primary School without Hektor, refusing to hear a word from him about it ever again.

* * *

><p>Mallory loved her new school. She loved coloring with the other kids. She loved her teacher, Miss Rosiello, who read stories to her students whenever they asked politely. She loved swinging on the swing set during recess. But most of all, she loved Show-and-Tell.<p>

She never brought anything in. The one time she tried to, her dad yelled at her until she cried and then stomped around the attic for an hour, looking for a suitable hiding place his daughter wouldn't be able to crawl or climb into. (And he never did apologize to her for his viciousness.)

No, she loved Show-and-Tell for another reason.

"Miss Rosiello, can I go now?" a boy asked one Friday, about two months into the school year. Eager to present his object to the class, he added, "I've got something _really_ awesome!"

"Of course, dear," she encouraged, absolutely positive that what he had would be interesting. "Go ahead."

The small boy didn't disappoint. He swung a pair of handcuffs around his skinny index finger and wiggled his eyebrows for dramatic effect. He got carried away, however, and they were hurled across the room a few seconds later. "Sorry. Sorry!" he cried.

He retrieved them from where they'd landed under a table in the back of the classroom but bumped his head against it as he was trying to stand up. All of the children laughed except for Mallory, who glared at them with as much contempt as a five-year-old could actually muster. They always found an excuse to ridicule their classmate.

"Oh honey, are you alright?" Miss Rosiello asked concernedly, checking his scalp for a bump.

The boy nodded, splotches of pink covering his normally pale cheeks. He looked down at the handcuffs, willing his embarrassment to disappear. He'd only wanted to show the class something cool. "I don't think I wanna go anymore," he mumbled.

"I wish you would," Miss Rosiello urged. When he wouldn't look up, she backed off. "But you don't have to if you don't want to."

"No, wait!" Mallory interjected. "I wanna see those!"

Once one of the other girls' giggles had subsided, she called out, "Yeah, me too!"

"Show them! Show them!" a boy in the front row chimed in.

Emboldened by their persistence, the lively child stood up straight, strutted to the front of the classroom, and started babbling away. "My dad said he's a deputy at the Beacon Hills Police Department and that he stops bad guys from getting away with these. They're called, 'Han Coughs'," he mispronounced, and Miss Rosiello had to contain her mirth. Oblivious to this, he continued, "His job is really cool and he gets to drive around in a car with a siren that he lets me play with sometimes. I wanna be just like him when I grow up!"

Mallory listened avidly as he spoke. Most of the kids were disappointed that Miss Rosiello wouldn't let them wear the handcuffs when the young boy passed them around, but she asked him anyway, "Can I put those on?"

He nodded vigorously, producing a key from the pocket of his small khakis and unlocking the cuffs. Mallory peered over his shoulder to make sure Miss Rosiello was occupied with the other kids before putting the handcuffs on and clicking them shut. She didn't tighten them but rather tugged her hands apart to test their capacity to restrain and snickered when they slipped off her petite wrists. The boy moved to catch them, but they clattered to the floor. He sniggered this time, thoroughly at ease with the girl who seemed to be more fascinated by the handcuffs than he was.

"These are _so_ cool! But – doesn't your daddy need them?" Mallory wondered what he was using in their place.

"They have extras at the station." Then the boy whispered conspiratorially, "My mom talked to him for a whole hour just so I could have them for Show-and-Tell. She can make him do _anything_."

"Wow. Your mom's awesome, Stiles!" she praised with a bright smile, and the boy named "Stiles" grinned back.

"Yeah, she – You know my name?" he interrupted himself to ask incredulously. He hadn't spoken to Mallory before; he'd wanted to on numerous occasions because she seemed so nice, but he'd never quite plucked up the courage.

"Yeah, silly. I've only heard it, like, a bazillion times," she laughed, wondering how she'd gone this long without once speaking to someone so charming. "It's an awesome name! I wish 'Stiles' was _my_ name!"

"Nuh-uh. 'Mallory' is so pretty," he complimented, making her redden ever so slightly. "Besides, 'Stiles' isn't even my real name."

This piqued Mallory's interest. "Oh yeah? What is?"

Stiles averted his eyes and scratched the back of his neck. "You'll make fun."

"No, I won't," she promised sincerely.

"Everybody else did. On the first day of school," he admitted, thinking about the agonizing ten minutes he'd spent listening to the other kids mocking him. Mallory was already friendlier than he predicted she'd be, but he was fairly confident his real name would be a deal breaker. If she'd be his friend, Stiles was perfectly willing to go his whole life without telling her.

"Everyone else is a butthead, then."

"It – it's hard to say it right," he stalled, even though she seemed genuine enough.

"I can do it!" she assured him, and he hesitated for a moment, but ultimately shook his head. "Why don't we trade? If you tell me your name…" She paused, thinking of what would make the deal fair. "I know! If you tell me your name, I'll _lick_ anybody that ever makes fun of you again."

"You'd really _do_ that?" His eyes twinkled hopefully. It sounded like she was prepared to get in trouble with the teacher, as long as it meant someone was standing up for him.

"Sure! I'd do it anyway, since they're mean to you all the time. But I think a trade's better." She nudged him playfully, and Stiles simply couldn't resist. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, causing her to blurt out, "Whoa! That's the best name ever!" followed by "Oops! Don't worry, I won't say it."

They pinky swore to make the deal official and then spent the afternoon playing and chatting. They swung on the swing set during recess, talking more about Stiles's dad and then about his mom, a pediatric surgeon at Beacon Hills Hospital ("a doctor who puts kids' insides back together" were his exact words, though). He told Mallory about Claudia's warm hugs and how her floral perfume was his favorite smell in the whole world and that she never discouraged his sadness by saying things like, "Boys don't cry." They discussed their favorite colors (his was blue and hers was green), their mutual love of puzzles and curly fries, and how the Kostas had only moved to Beacon Hills a little over three weeks ago.

"Oh! So that's why you weren't here before," Stiles remarked. "Where'd you come from?"

"A place called 'Cuneticut'. We had to leave 'cause of my dad's job. He's a teacher like Miss Rosiello," Mallory answered boastfully.

"Does he teach here?" Stiles asked, twisting his swing around as if he'd find Mr. Kosta somewhere on the playground.

"Nuh-uh, I wish. He's at the school down the street," she stated, referring to Beacon Hills High School. Beaming proudly, she started raving about her father. "He's the smartest guy ever! And it's nice 'cause he's always here to pick me up on time. You can meet him today if you wanna. You'll like him. He says everyone's name right on the first try!"

Stiles wondered briefly if he was imagining her, but then her laugh rang through the air, giving him the loveliest goosebumps. And how could that not be real?

Later, when Mallory licked three other kids, she got in trouble with Miss Rosiello and had to sit quietly in a corner during snack time. That was definitely real.

Stiles couldn't believe his luck: everybody liked what he'd presented for Show-and-Tell that day, and the girl he'd been too shy to talk to until just a few hours ago was surely now his _friend_.

When the school day was over, they waited dutifully for Hektor, both of them keen on Stiles meeting him. He had to be great if he was her dad.

But forty-five minutes passed and he still hadn't arrived. He hadn't called ahead to let Miss Rosiello know he'd be late, either, so Mallory began making excuses, trying to hide her unease. "He's probably helping one of his kids and just…forgot."

"Yeah, sure," Stiles agreed half-heartedly, unable to picture anyone forgetting Mallory, let alone her own father.

Miss Rosiello called the high school asking for Mr. Kosta, but the principal's secretary told her that he never came back from lunch. It was 4:15.

Stiles waited patiently the whole time, but it made him sad how unmistakably worried Mallory was, staring at the ground and gnawing away at her upper lip. He rested his hand on her forearm the way he'd seen his mom do with his dad when he was upset and delicately mentioned his house being a few blocks from the school. Ten minutes later, she took him up on the offer to have his mom pick them up, when it became clear Hektor truly wasn't coming. She left Beacon Hills Primary School with a frown that Stiles found himself very annoyed with her father for.

How he felt about Hektor Kosta didn't matter, though. Stiles wasn't going to meet him, and Mallory wasn't going to see him again. Not for a very long time.


	2. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1**

_I went out into the night,  
><em>_I went out to find some light.  
><em>_Kids are dyin' out in the snow,  
><em>_Look at them go, look at them go!_

"Stiles Stilinski, quit eyeing my cookies!" Mallory Durant scolded the boy in question, who was in fact blatantly staring at her delicious, double-chocolate chip cookies.

"Wh – I am a growing boy, Mal!" Stiles said defensively. At Mal's indifferent expression, he added, "Aww c'mon. Just one bite?"

"_One_ bite," she conceded, holding a cookie out to Stiles. But rather than taking the promised "one bite", he proceeded to suck it out of her hand like a vacuum. She sighed, unsurprised. Stiles was always hungry; even when he lost his appetite, he'd find it again a few minutes later. "How have _none _of your other vital organs fallen through the massive hole in your stomach yet?"

"Hey! You know I'm watching Dad's cholesterol. I've been trying not to eat junk food around him," Stiles explained.

"Haven't you guys been on that health kick for months?" Mal had heard about it extensively from the Sheriff, who was still pretty grouchy about the whole thing ("I have no veto power in my own house!")

"Yeah, but I caught him sneaking a bag of potato chips into his room last week. I had to vacate the premises of all fried, salty, and sugary things."

"Ahh, that explains the Ho Hos and five bags of Lays under my bed." Mal already figured it was her strange friend's doing but didn't consider it necessary to ask why, given that she'd known Stiles since kindergarten.

"Oh yeah, remind me to –"

Stiles was cut off by his dad's cell phone ringing from the living room. He and Mal leapt off the kitchen counter and raced toward the phone, clearly hoping for a crime they could somehow witness in the generally sleepy town of Beacon Hills. The Sheriff, however, reached his phone right as Stiles was about to pick it up off the coffee table and slapped his snooping son's hand away before he could answer.

"Again, kid?" the Sheriff asked, annoyed with but mostly tired of Stiles's consistent intrusiveness. He answered the phone, but at his son's carefully calculated, innocent look, nodded at Mal and ordered, "Take her home. It's almost 11, and tomorrow's your first day back at school."

Mal pulled a reluctant Stiles out of the living room, closing the door behind her.

"Alright, I'll drive you," he said dejectedly, but she was on the ground with an ear pressed to the crack under the door. They shared a devious glance before he, too, got down on the carpet.

* * *

><p>Scott McCall didn't play baseball. In fact, no one in the McCall household did. But a baseball bat was the closest thing to the sixteen-year-old boy when he heard a suspicious creaking noise outside, and it was that baseball bat he took out onto the porch to investigate with.<p>

Moving as quietly and cautiously as he could, Scott searched the darkness around him, firmly gripping his wooden baseball bat and poised to strike any potential "predators." As he scanned his front yard, a person fell from the porch roof, upside down and hanging by his legs. Thoroughly alarmed, Scott yelled and swung his bat, about to strike flesh and bone when he recognized the boy in front of him, who also happened to be yelling and defending himself – by flailing his arms. From somewhere above the dangling boy, Scott could hear a panicked and more feminine voice hollering, "I'm losing you, I'm losing you!"

"Stiles, what the hell are you doing?!" Scott cried, angry now that he knew the cause of the ruckus was his arguably deranged best friend.

"You weren't answering your phone!" Stiles justified in a high-pitched tone, still dangling from the porch roof. "Why do you have a bat?"

Inspecting his choice of weapon, Scott shouted, "I thought you were a predator!"

"A pre – I – wha –" Stiles scoffed, and Scott could hear snickering from above him. "I know it's –"

"Mal, is that you?" he interrupted, already sure of the answer.

"Hey, Scott. I'd ask how it's hanging, but it really feels like that should've been _your_ first question. You missed a perfect opportunity, dude," Mal called down to him. "Anyway, what's up?"

He wasn't amused. "Wh – you, clearly! What are you doing up there? Or better yet, what are you two doing _here_?"

"Well, _someone_ had to hold down this idiot's legs and make sure he didn't crack his skull open."

"Look, we know it's late, but you gotta hear this. We saw my dad leave twenty minutes ago. Dispatch called, they're bringing in every officer from the Beacon department and even state police," Stiles elaborated, ignoring the "idiot" remark.

"For what?" Scott asked, calmer now.

"Two joggers found a body in the woods," Mal answered.

Scott watched as Stiles tapped her hands so she could let him jump down. "A dead body?"

"No, a body of water. Yes, dumbass, a dead body," Stiles replied sarcastically, popping up from the ground.

He took a few steps back and held out his arms to catch Mal, who didn't take his help and landed rather ungracefully on the lawn between the two boys. This time, she took his offered hand, and he pulled her to her feet, brushing grass off the back of her jacket and then swinging himself over the fence and onto the porch.

"You mean like murdered?" Scott asked, growing more intrigued by the minute.

"Nobody knows yet," Mal responded.

"Just that it was a girl, probably in her twenties," Stiles finished, disturbingly smug that he knew this.

"Hold on, if they found the body, then what are they looking for?"

"That's the best part: they only found half!" Looking eagerly between Scott and Mal, who winked back, Stiles declared, "We're going."

Fifteen minutes later, Stiles pulled his Jeep up to the entrance of the Beacon Hills preserve, plainly ignoring the "NO ENTRY AFTER DARK" sign that cautioned against the ominous woods.

"We're seriously doing this?" Scott questioned for maybe the seventh time.

"You're the one always bitching that nothing ever happens in this town," Stiles reasoned as Mal hopped down from the backseat and rolled her eyes. She patted Scott on the back reassuringly before catching up to Stiles, who held the flashlight ahead of them.

"I was trying to get a good night's sleep before practice tomorrow."

"Right. Because sitting on the bench is such a grueling effort," Stiles quipped, walking briskly through the trees with Mal.

Scott jogged to keep up. "No, because I'm playing this year. In fact, I'm making first line," he proclaimed.

"Hey! That's the spirit. Everyone should have a dream, even a pathetically unrealistic one," Stiles mocked.

Mal shoved him, and he momentarily lost balance. "Don't be a dick. Scott's been practicing all break. Right, bud?"

"Thank you! Yeah, I have," he confirmed.

"Although I did kick your ass last week. Three times…and I don't play lacrosse," she whispered to Scott before getting shoved herself. Grinning, she ruffled his hair affectionately.

"Just out of curiosity, which half of the body are we looking for?" Scott asked.

Stiles paused for a beat, laughing lightly, "Huh, we didn't even think about that."

"And, uh, what if whoever killed the body is still out here?" Scott seemed to be more amused than troubled.

"Also something we didn't think about."

"Jeez, stop asking so many questions. Just go with it, man," Mal urged, casually applying her chapstick as if the three of them were simply hanging out and not attempting to track down half of a dead body. Although these two things didn't seem to be mutually exclusive with this group of friends.

"I really think you two finding each other was the universe's worst idea," Scott teased, as the three friends made their way up a steep ridge. He panted, "It's – comforting to know you guy have planned this out with your usual attention to detail."

"I know," Stiles replied as Mal said, "We try."

"Maybe the severe asthmatic should be the one holding the flashlight, huh?" Scott pulled out his inhaler and shook it. Mal glanced back at him out of concern, but he waved her off.

Spotting multiple flashlights and police dogs, the three teenagers dove to the ground and hid until Stiles became too impatient to stay there any longer.

"Wait, come on!" he beckoned to his friends.

Mal overtook him quickly.

"Guys!" Scott shook his inhaler again and took a hit, before taking off after them. "Wait up! Stiles! Mal!"

The three friends were separated from each other within seconds.

Mal searched frantically for any sign of her companions and thankfully, was soon alerted to the bark of a K-9. A ways behind, Stiles fell over himself and to the wet ground, startled by the police dog.

"Hold it right there!" a deputy shouted at Stiles, apparently looking for his gun.

"Wait, don't shoot!" Mal shrieked, assuming a protective stance in front of Stiles with her hands held out in submission. He reached for the belt of her trench coat but missed, unsuccessful in his efforts to prevent her from acting stupid.

"Hang on, hang on!" came the gruff voice of the Sheriff. "These little delinquents belong to me – Jesus, Mal, put your hands down. No one's _shooting_ anyone."

She dropped her hands but winced; they were done for.

"Dad, how are you doing?" Stiles greeted as nonchalantly as possible, while Mal helped him up by his elbow.

"So…do you, uh, listen in to all of my phone calls?" the Sheriff countered in a somewhat defeated tone, squinting between the two teens.

"No!" Stiles swore, but confessed a second later, "Not the boring ones."

"Nice," Mal muttered, glaring at him but then deciding it would be best for her to take the blame now. The Sheriff would go easier on her, and she knew she should be held accountable anyway. "This one's actually my fault. We were listening at the door, I egged him on. Sorry, Sheriff."

He nodded, pretending to understand. "Right, because this miscreant _needs_ egging on. You two practically feed off of each other's penchant for troublemaking," he remarked with narrowed, knowing eyes. "Now, where's your other partner in crime?" he asked.

Mal feigned innocence. "Who, Scott?"

"Scott's home. He said he wanted to get a good night's sleep for the first day back at school tomorrow," Stiles cut in, still out of breath but not missing a beat. Mal would've high-fived him for his quick thinking if the Sheriff weren't there, but her pride dissolved at his next words. "It's just Mal and me. In the woods. Alone."

Mal's eye twitched, but thankfully, the Sheriff didn't notice. He was too busy suspiciously scrutinizing Stiles. Unconvinced, he quirked a single eyebrow and held it there until Stiles shrank under his piercing gaze.

The Sheriff must've picked up on the shifty look in Stiles's eyes when he lied. _Just Mal and me. Alone._ That had to be it. She wondered for a moment if he'd heard something romantic in the words and doubted his son on account of it, but she immediately felt bad for even considering this.

To back her friend up, she nodded her head, albeit with an awkward and nervous smile on her face. "Y'know, one last hurrah before school starts again," she said, pumping her fist in the air pathetically. It was only half-untrue, but she still hated lying to Stiles's dad.

"Scott, you out there? Scott?" The Sheriff checked the trees with his flashlight to no avail.

Mal took in as much as of her surrounding as she could without tipping him off. The woods were infinitely less menacing with him around, but her anxiety was growing by the second. Where was Scott? Was he out of the preserve yet? Was the killer in the woods with all of them?

This wasn't how their night was supposed to go, but Mal knew she couldn't search for him then, so she resigned to coming back later.

"Well, young man – and young lady – I'm gonna walk you both back to the Jeep," the Sheriff said, clasping the back of his son's neck and Mal's upper arm, escorting them out of the preserve. "Stiles, you're gonna take Mal home, drive straightback to _our _house, and then you and I are gonna have a conversation about something called 'invasion of privacy' – And 'putting your friends in harm's way', if the mood should strike me. Which it probably will. Mal, I really don't wanna worry your mom, so we can keep it between us this time. But you could've gotten hurt, okay?"

She nodded earnestly and Stiles stared remorsefully at his Converse.

His dad never said it out loud, he would never deliberately upset Mal that way, but they all knew. If she got hurt, seriously hurt, it would destroy her mother.

"I know. But hey, not a scratch on me, right? And besides, I can take care of myself. If you wanna worry about someone, worry about Stiles. Kid's kind of shrimpy, breakable even." Trying to lighten the mood, Mal gently pinched Stiles's arm – which was actually quite solid – but caught a glimpse of his downcast eyes and shut her mouth, assuming she'd offended him.

The Sheriff chuckled, and when they reached the Jeep, he sent her into the car with a hug. "I wish your obviously bad influence on each other made me dislike you, Mal."

"No you don't, Sheriff," she laughed as she buckled herself into the passenger seat. "I'll see you around."

"Under more pleasant circumstances, I hope?"

"I wouldn't say tonight wasn't pleasant. Would you, Stiles?" She turned to her friend for affirmation but when none came, shrugged at his father. "Don't worry, I'll make sure he _speeds_ all the way back to my house."

"And then straight to ours, Stiles," the Sheriff reiterated, peering through the passenger side window. Taking no chances, he commanded, "Stay _under_ the limit."

He tapped the Jeep's hood before returning to the dead body search.

Mal twisted in her seat to face Stiles before he could even put his keys in the ignition. "So what's the plan? Do you wanna meet up later? You should probably drop me off at my place first. I have a feeling your dad might call my mom to 'catch up' and ask about me to make sure you actually took me home this time…but if _you_ go home, maybe not because let's be real, where would I go this late without you? Okay, so it takes about ten minutes to drive back to my house and another ten to yours, so you should probably just cruise around until then. And I'll obviously call you when I find Scott –"

"When you find Scott," Stiles echoed hollowly.

"Yeah, someone's gotta look for him, and you have to be home in twenty minutes or your dad's liable to cuff you to his desk for the rest of your life," she clarified.

"Did you hear a word he said? Did you hear a word the_ Sheriff_ said?" Stiles's voice was slightly shrill.

"Of course I did, but since when have _you_ listened to anything your dad says?" she retorted, pointing out his typical disregard for rules. "We got Scott into this mess, remember? I have to find him."

"You don't have to do anything except let me take you back to your house and go to sleep."

"Stiles –"

"Don't 'Stiles' me. You heard my dad. You could've gotten hurt, Mallory. That would've been on me, and it'll be my fault and mine alone if you get killed because I let you out of this car!" he argued, the volume of his voice rising with every sentence.

Shocked, Mal sat back for a moment, but mild horror filled her when he locked their doors and started the car.

"Wait! We can't leave him. Whoever or whatever killed that girl could still be out there. He's alone, and no one knows he's here except us. We have to find him! You can't just drive away! Stop!" she begged him, terrified at the realization that no one knew precisely where Scott was, not even her and Stiles. She placed her hands on the gearstick to prevent Stiles from pulling out of the preserve, desperate for him to listen.

He paused. "Do you know where he is? His _exact_ location? Because if you do, tell me, and I'll come with you. I don't care if my dad throws me in a cell with the Zodiac killer. I will come with you. Problem is: Scott could be anywhere by now."

"No, he's – he has to be around here somewhere. He can't have gotten that far! I – I have my phone. I can call him," Mal tried, but she knew as well as Stiles did that Scott didn't have service out in the woods. It was a miracle she had three bars herself.

Before Stiles could point out these obvious facts, she pressed '3' on her speed dial, praying Scott would pick up. His cell went straight to voicemail, so she left one and tried again. And again. And again. And again.

Nothing.

"What if you wait here for a few minutes and I try to find him as fast as I can? I'll call you every twenty seconds," Mal implored, grasping at straws.

"You'll get yourself killed, and what good would that do anybody? You're not even sure he's here – _don't_ try to deny it…I have to take you home. My dad was right, I put you in danger, and I should've known better." As he reversed the Jeep and headed to Mal's house, he attempted to comfort her. "Come on, keep calling him. He'll pick up eventually."

"Not if whoever cut that girl in half decides one person isn't enough!"

"Mal, he will be fine. The killer probably isn't even there anymore. How stupid would that be?"

"About as stupid as three adrenaline junkie teenagers scouring a forest for half of a dead body? Oh, wait!" she laughed, moderately hysterical. She hated herself for having supported this particular escapade only an hour ago.

"We aren't adrenaline junkies," Stiles scoffed. She made the sound of a cat being strangled, so he said quickly, "But that – that is not the point here."

"Oh god! What if the killer wasn't even human? It'd still be in the woods. With Scott. More than likely hunting him down, waiting to feast on sixteen-year-old-boy flesh!" Mal was spiraling into insanity now, thinking up the goriest scenarios. Images of her friend clawing at a tree flashed through her mind, blood dripping out of Scott's every orifice while a large, savage creature lurked in the background, baring five-inch-long fangs.

"Okay, Mal. Stop that! You're freaking yourself out for no reason. The body was cut in half, not torn into shreds," Stiles rationalized. "And if it _is_ missing flesh, that's just 'cause some maggots got hungry. The killer has to be human, and only a moron would stick around the place he dumped a body…or half a dead body, in this case."

His logic wasn't airtight and he was being sort of gross, but it halted Mal's black thoughts, allowing her to reclaim her sanity. He was certainly right about one thing: going back for their best friend now could get her killed.

She called Scott another three times. His cell went straight to voicemail again, but she'd sufficiently calmed down by this point. She told him to call her back or just shoot her a quick text the_ instant_ he got her messages and resolved to wait for him to do so. The remainder of the car ride was silent, apart from the restless tapping of Mal's feet against the floor.

When Stiles reached her house, he stalled the engine, not wanting to draw the attention of Mal's mom. "She awake?"

"Doubt it, I told her I'd be out late with you, so…" Her voice trailed off, hundreds of thoughts cluttering up her head.

"Seriously, Mal. He'll be fine. He'll call when he hears how freaked out you've been. He'll sleep in his bed tonight and ride his bike to school tomorrow and –"

" – And make first line at lacrosse practice," she finished distractedly.

"Exactly!" Stiles exclaimed, glad Mal was at least playing along. But then he realized what he'd agreed with her about. "Uh, well…"

She smiled. "He'll be sitting on the bench with you?"

"There you go!" Stiles approved. "So I'll pick you up tomorrow – or later, I guess?" He checked the time on his dashboard. It was after midnight. "Yeah, just later."

"Sure. _Call_ if you hear from him," Mal requested as she got out of the Jeep and walked around the hood, slinging her backpack over her shoulder.

"'Course," he vowed with a salute. "Try to get some sleep, Mal."

"_Try _being the operative word." Stiles gazed at her with his lips pressed together, contemplating the strong urge to get out of his car and give her a hug. He was gripping the door handle when she reminded him, "Your dad's probably waiting for you. With a couple of choice expletives, I'm sure."

"Spectacular." Stiles grimaced, slumping back in his seat. "Just so you're aware, his twenty plus years with the Beacon Hills PD have probably taught him a variety of foolproof methods for getting away with murder. Keep that in mind if I'm not back here at 7:15?"

"You got it," Mal snorted, sauntering backward up her walkway. "Hey, did you know it's called 'filicide' when it's your kid? _There's_ a fun fact for ya."

"That is the _opposite_ of a fun fact!" he groaned, only half-alarmed by her comment. "I'm leaving all my stuff to you. Take good care of my drums!"

And with that, Stiles drove off, spying Mal's relaxed grin in his side-view mirror.

_Good,_ he thought contentedly.

* * *

><p>Mal locked the mahogany panel door behind her as quietly as she could and then scowled when it gave its customary click, a deafening sound in the otherwise silent foyer.<p>

The Durant entryway was welcoming. The walls were a cozy maroon. A dark walnut-stained wooden staircase with an iron banister stood to the right but curved slightly to the left as it rose. A coat rack was nailed to the left-hand wall a few feet into the house, under which was a jumble of boots, heels, and sneakers. Slightly further down hung an antique, framed, gold mirror above a sapphire blue dresser. Car keys and house keys sat in a bowl atop the dresser, next to a stack of _Los Angeles Times_ newspapers and _Time _magazines. A bronze chandelier hung from the ceiling, currently unlit.

Mal hung her raincoat and dark purple beanie on the rack, stepped out of her Doc Martens, and deposited them by the rest of the shoes, noticing a pair of Timberlands among them. _So Theo's back_.

She snuck up the stairs to the second door on the left. Mal's bedroom was nestled cozily in the left wing of second floor rooms and connected to her bathroom from the inside as well as the outside, the first door at the top of the stairs. It was a good set-up, appropriately private for an adolescent girl.

Across the hall, the door to her brother's room was open (as it always was when he came home). Mal knew he was asleep by the sound of his signature soft wheezing. She wanted to check in on him and see how four months of grad school had taken its toll on her older brother, but he was a light sleeper, so she let him be.

Mal tossed her backpack on her bed, a four-poster with emerald, velvet curtains that she'd coordinated with the color of her bedroom walls. The bed was situated between two windows overlooking the backyard, and in front of those windows sat two cherry wood bedside tables. A matching dresser stood in the corner on the right side of the room, next to her bathroom door. The wall surrounding the desk and closet on the left side was plastered with band, movie, and TV show posters; and photos of Mal, Theo, and her mom in equal proportion to ones of her, Scott, and Stiles. The only framed photo on her desk was one Scott had taken the previous summer; Mal was giving Stiles a piggyback ride, and he was smiling toothily, holding two thumbs up to the camera over her shoulders.

Mal shimmied out of her skinny jeans – the chaos of that night making her deeply regret the decision to wear them – and put on a pair of flannel pajamas before brushing her teeth and crawling under her duvet. She stared at the ceiling hard, willing Scott to call. Minutes felt like hours just lying there, so she got out of bed to pace around her room. She tried busying herself with picking clothes for the next day but finished the task in less than a minute, too distracted to really care.

Just as she was about to call Stiles and ask if he'd heard from Scott, Mal's phone vibrated on her desk, and she couldn't have been more relieved to see the name on her caller ID.

"Where the hell have you been?!" she whisper-yelled.

"_Where do you think?_" Scott asked tiredly.

"Right. Well, where are you now? Are you home? Are you alright?!" Mal fired question after question.

"_Yes, Mal. I'm in my room and I'm alright._"

"Scott, I am so _so_ sorry. We shouldn't have deserted you like that," she apologized frantically.

He brushed it aside. "_It's fine. Don't worry about it._"

"I _am _going to worry about it. Tell me what happened!"

"_Can we talk at school?_" he asked wearily. "_I'm really tired._"

"Uh, yeah, of course. Get some rest," she said, wondering why he was being evasive but filing her questions away for later. "I'm really sorry I left you behind."

"_It's okay. I'd have gotten in a shitload of trouble with my mom if you hadn't._"

"Kinda seems like your life is more important, though."

"_I'm totally – I swear to you I'm okay. Besides, your twelve phone calls and three hysterical voicemails pretty much make up for it –"_

"They weren't _all _hysterical –"

" – _and I'm home now_."

Mal acknowledged the statement with a sigh. "Which is what matters, I know…but you can expect profuse apologies and sucking up for the next week. From me _and _Stiles," she promised. "Have you called him yet?"

"_Just did. He wasn't, uh, overly concerned,_" Scott replied tentatively.

"Ass," Mal cursed, although it was through a chuckle.

"_Yeah. He was more worried about you, yelled at me for not calling you first._"

"Jesus."

Scott snorted and then said through a yawn, "_It's way later than I wanted to be awake, so I'm gonna go. We'll talk at school._"

Mal glanced at her alarm clock. 12:57 AM. "Fair enough. G'night, bud."

After hanging up, she slipped back into bed, expecting sleep to come swiftly. Only, she just couldn't stop thinking. About her best friends, about the night's events before and after the Sheriff found her and Stiles in the woods, and about what Scott wouldn't say on the phone. Most of her thoughts dissipated eventually, but weirdly, the one question that wouldn't abate concerned the dead girl. Had she finally found relief?

Mal fiercely hoped the answer was yes. For some reason, it was like she needed it to be.


	3. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_Let's stick together  
><em>_Let's follow our hearts  
><em>_Not even lions, can tear us apart_

At 6:15 that same morning, Mal mercilessly splashed freezing water on her face to wake herself up before brushing her teeth and showering. Toweling off, she grimaced at the haphazardly thrown together outfit she'd picked the night before – _Sweatpants and a peplum top, yikes, _she thought – and tossed it back in her dresser drawer. Instead, she opted for a short-sleeved, floral print skater dress paired with thigh-high tights, silver feather earrings, a gray scarf and her faux leather biker jacket. Mal combed her hair, tied it into a side ponytail and swiped on some eyeliner and mascara before examining herself in the bathroom mirror.

Satisfied, she packed her backpack, slung it over her shoulder and poked her head into Theo's room to check if he'd woken up. He was still asleep, so she stuck a note to his door saying she was sorry she'd missed him the night before and to text her if he wanted to "grab coffee or ice cream or whatever you want, on me, because I know that you have maybe 50¢ to your name".

Dressed to the nines in a fitted suit and black pumps, Elaine Durant was humming "Girl" by Beck and stirring cinnamon sugar oatmeal on the stove when Mal walked downstairs.

"So it was you who stole my Beck CD. J'accuse!" she exclaimed with playful reproach.

Mal's mom turned around and winked at her daughter. "Can't steal what your own money bought, babe!"

"Touché," Mal surrendered, lacking a comeback. She'd only gotten a summer job at Macy's that June, so she hadn't been making any money a year ago, when she'd wanted to buy her – and now obviously her mom's – favorite Beck album.

"When did you get back last night? I didn't hear you come in," Elaine asked, affecting a more parental tone of voice.

Mal answered honestly, "Twelve-thirty, but don't worry. I was safe with Stiles the whole time." It was a good thing her mom had no reason to ask about Scott, because "safe the whole time" was more than she could say for _him._

"Safewith _Stiles_? Stilinski?" Elaine asked doubtfully, if somewhat astutely. "The boy who managed to get your dress caught in a lawnmower when you were nine?"

"Hey, that was an accident! And we _both_ wanted to ride the thing," Mal defended staunchly. She and Stiles had acted on the brilliant idea to go for a spin on the Sheriff's lawnmower when they were younger, and while they were fighting for control over the appliance, it nearly sliced her leg off, tearing her favorite purple polka-dot dress in the process. Still, the impulse had been shared. "Besides, I only needed two stitches."

"Mhmm, and you were only crying for an hour," Elaine retorted.

"You're thinking of Stiles," Mal corrected with a reminiscent smile.

He hadn't wanted to leave Mal in the hospital room by herself, so he'd gone in with her to keep her company while they waited for her mom. He hadn't expected to be the one needing someone to hold his hand while the doctor stitched her up, but he'd freaked out the appropriate amount for a nine-year-old boy whose best friend had almost become an amputee thanks to a machine that was only supposed to cut grass.

"Oh lord, that's right. God love that boy!" Elaine laughed fondly, rubbing her chin in thought. "He's picking you up today, right? 'Cause I have to be at the office soon."

"Yup." Mal nodded, sliding her backpack off of her shoulders and noticing the briefcase on the island counter. "Why's McGimme calling you in now?"

Elaine rolled her eyes at the infantile – but fitting – nickname for her boss. "He needs me to help draft a severance agreement." The blank look on Mal's face prompted her to continue, "For Beacon County Advanced Research Supplies? They have to lay off about a hundred people in a month." Mal still showed no sign of recollection. "Do you just completely zone out when I talk about work?" her mom teased.

She was a junior partner at Noble & McGivney LLP, a corporate law firm for Beacon County, and often had to work outrageously long hours. Seven AM wasn't at all the earliest they had called her in, and she was frequently gone for two or three days at a stretch. Which is why Mal – and secretly, most of Elaine's associates – called her boss "McGimme".

"Of course I do. Corporate law isn't exactly as nail-biting as _Law and Order_, Mom," Mal stated frankly, smirking.

"Maybe not, but without it, you'd be wearing a burlap sack as a dress," Elaine wisecracked, matching her daughter's expression effortlessly. "So, I really wouldn't start running my mouth, if I were you."

Mal grinned before remembering to ask, "Oh hey, when did Theo get here? I didn't know he was coming home for break."

"What?! Your brother's here?" Elaine asked incredulously. She darted out of the kitchen as quickly as her heels would allow but paused to gaze up the stairs, as if that would answer her question.

Mal followed her, snickering. It was common knowledge that Elaine Durant was aware of maybe fifteen percent of the things that went on with her own son. "Yeah, his door was open when I got back."

"God! That boy never _tells_ me anything," she whined, resolving to call later just to scold him. Returning to the oatmeal, she poured a bowl for Mal and herself, and they ate in silence for a few minutes before she inquired, "Are you excited for school? You look lovely, by the way."

"Thanks," Mal beamed at the compliment. "You know, despite the four hours of sleep I had last night, I actually am."

Her mom pulled a face quite uncharacteristic for someone who was supposed to be a serious lawyer. "Are we sure you're my kid? Because I hated school when I was sixteen. Your grandmother had to pay me fifty bucks just to wake up on the first day of my junior year…Why don't I have to bribe you to go back?"

"Uh…well…" she floundered, picking at the tassels of her scarf nervously. "I – I'm taking AP Psych this semester." Her mom's jovial expression immediately vanished, and Mal's heart plummeted to her stomach. "But I told you about this over vacation, remember? It's – you said it was fine," she reminded her hastily, stumbling over her words a little and crossing her fingers that her mom wouldn't revoke the permission she'd tiredly and absentmindedly granted.

Mal had made the request in the lowest vocal register she could reach while her mom was falling asleep on the couch one evening after thirty-four consecutive hours of work. She believed she'd timed it perfectly but it was now appearing to have been a stupid plan.

Elaine didn't yell, but rather snatched Mal's unfinished oatmeal and poured it down the garbage disposal before scrubbing their dishes viciously, her body distinctly bent over the sink – away from Mal. "You know, I can't say that rings a bell, but it's fine. I'm only your mother. You should just do whatever pleases _you_," she replied brusquely, tossing the bowls into the dishwasher and snatching her briefcase off the counter.

As her mom stalked out to the garage, Mal sighed heavily and wondered, _Why do I ever open my mouth?_

* * *

><p>Stiles honked his horn outside Mal's house at 6:58, apparently anxious to get to school. He was never late when it concerned his best friend – previous experience had made sure of that – but he was never <em>this<em> early, either. Especially on the first day of school, which he had so lovingly labeled, "the foulest kind of sadism known to man".

Naturally, Mal was apprehensive.

"Umm, not that I'm not glad to see you in one piece, after what I'm sure was your dad's new record for Longest Lecture Given at 100 Decibels, but what are you doing here so early?" she questioned suspiciously.

"Get in! I'll explain on the way," he insisted, leaning over the passenger seat and flinging the door open.

Mal climbed into the Jeep and tossed Stiles an apple, taking a bite of her own. He sped to the high school with one hand on the wheel but chewed his apple at a glacial pace. This further agitated Mal because: a) by now she was used to him scarfing everything down like it was the last thing he'd ever eat and b) something was clearly wrong.

"So… what did your dad say?" she used as a starting point.

The Sheriff had already tried threatening, bribery, and extortion on his son, but not one of those tactics had ever worked. What else was there?

Stiles shrugged, immune to his father's reprimanding at this point. "Eh, mostly the usual. 'If you don't shape up, I'll ground you until you forget what the sky looks like,' and 'I'll extend your curfew by an hour if you just stay put at Mal's house and watch Star Wars or do something equally legal and ordinary with her.'"

The Sheriff had evidently run out of strategies.

Mal shook her head smilingly. "He's recycling. So, that covers threats and bribes. Blackmail?"

Stiles smirked. "He swore he'd tell you and Scott about when I air-guitared to 'You're Gonna Go Far, Kid' so violently, I wrenched my neck and couldn't look anywhere but straight up for two days. Which was pointless because Scott was lip-syncing and you were air-drumming the whole time," he chuckled.

She sucked air through her teeth in teasing disappointment. "The man should've known that."

"Yeah. So now I'm on dish duty for the rest of the week." Stiles fought to suppress his devilish grin but failed, and Mal knew why.

"You poor thing," she deadpanned. "It's not like Reagan was president the last time someone used your kitchen or anything."

The Stilinski men had prepared maybe two meals during the time Mal had known them, and "prepared" was kind of an overstatement since it was all according to her mom's stringent instructions. They normally relied on microwaveable mac n' cheese and Elaine's cooking. Consequently, Stiles hadn't washed a dish in years.

"I know. It's gonna be tough, but I _deserve_ to be punished." He managed to rein in his complacence and didn't say anything after that, facing forward again. He peeked at Mal out of the corner of his eye, attempting to gauge her potential reaction to what he really wanted to tell her, what he'd been withholding for several hours. After a significant silence, he unpromisingly began, "I gotta tell you something, but don't get mad, okay?"

"Oh boy. What did you do?" Mal demanded, half-nervous. Stiles did a lot of stupid things, but she was usually right there by his side to make sure he didn't hurt himself or break any serious laws – when she wasn't cheering him on, that is. For him to be hiding something from her meant that what he'd done was probably _bad_.

"Okay, look, it's not that we _did_ anything, per se. We just didn't say anything to you. For your own good –"

"_We_? Who's _we_?"

"Me and Scott."

"You and Scott," Mal repeated, narrowing her eyes.

"You were essentially panicking when I had to take you home, so we just didn't think it was worth you freaking out all night. He's totally fine, hand to God!" Stiles vowed, talking a mile a minute.

"Stiles, what the hell happened?"

"Scott said he was bitten," he blurted. "When he called me last night, he told me he tried to leave the woods after my dad found us and then – and then he got bitten."

"Bitten? What does _that_ mean? Bitten by what?" she pressed, more confused than aggravated.

"See, I don't actually know. I didn't let him give me that many details. I wanted him to call you since you were so tense –" he justified before Mal interrupted him.

" – but you told him to leave out essentially the most important part of what happened? You didn't even think to ask what he was bitten by?"

"Well, no. But he's fine! He said he was okay, right?"

"I sorta think 'bitten by who the hell knows what' qualifies as a lot less than okay!" she exclaimed. "Oh god, this is our fault, _my _fault! I shouldn't have let you take us dead body hunting. I shouldn't have encouraged listening in on your dad's phone call!" she moaned, a second surge of guilt hitting her.

"Yeah, okay, this is why we didn't wanna tell you. You're buggin' out way more than the situation calls for." But that didn't calm her down, so he tried recovering with, "It's done, alright? There's nothing we can do about it now. I'm sorry we kept you in the dark, but Scott'll explain everything when we get to school. Which is why we're so early, by the way."

Luckily for Stiles, Mal lived within a driving distance short enough from Beacon Hills High School that he only had to withstand her glowering at him for a few minutes. He parked the Jeep and cut the engine, studying his unhappy friend for a second. She ignored his scrutiny and stared at her boots irately. But being friends with Stiles, it was kind of impossible to stay mad at him. When he had trouble yanking his backpack out of the backseat and then tumbled comically out of the Jeep, Mal felt compelled to conceal her smile behind the sleeve of her jacket.

"D'ya think Scott has rabies? Or maybe tetanus? Because the irony of that would be _mag_nificent," Stiles joked rather merrily, hoping to alleviate any tension while they hurried toward the front of the school to meet Scott. "Y'know, since he…works with animals…on the regular," he awkwardly finished. But this time, he caught Mal giggling softly. "Ha! So you're not pissed! You can't be pissed if you're laughing at my bad jokes."

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and squeezed her against him, making it difficult for either of them to walk properly.

Mal's irritation quickly dissolved. "No, I'm not pissed," she relented, elbowing him lightly. Though he barely felt it, he grunted and released her to rub his ribcage theatrically. "You just – don't hide stuff from me. I hate being out of the loop."

Stiles nodded energetically. "Henceforth, you will be in the know. No secrets. Complete honesty. Total candor. Absolute – "

Mal held a hand up and said, "I get it."

"Oh hey, there he is."

Stiles nodded toward Scott, who was unfastening his helmet by the bike rack as a silver Porsche pulled into the parking spot next to him. Jackson Whittemore, resident asshole, bumped the back of Scott's legs as he opened his car door and then dared to get up in his face about it. That's what it looked like from where Stiles and Mal were standing on the front walkway, anyhow.

"He's being a total dick right now, I just know it," she seethed, her fists clenched.

"I hate him. Class hasn't even started yet, and I wanna punch him in the face. God!" Stiles groaned, as Jackson swaggered toward his posse.

"You always wanna punch him in the face," Mal correctly pointed out.

She'd never seen her friend wearing anything remotely resembling a smile around Jackson Whittemore. In fact, Stiles was usually muttering curse words under his breath whenever he was within fifty feet of the guy. (Not that Mal didn't regularly pray Jackson step on a Lego every twenty minutes for the rest of his life.)

"So do you!" Stiles argued.

Before she could respond, Scott walked up to the bickering pair. "Hey guys," he greeted cheerfully.

Mal wasn't mad at Stiles anymore, but Scott had also kept his bite a secret, so she crossed her arms and scowled fiercely. "What the hell, dude?"

"What?" he asked innocently, slightly taken aback by this total opposite of the "profuse apologies" he'd been expecting.

"You were bitten last night and then, oh I dunno, neglected to tell your best girl friend about it."

"You couldn't have waited for me? Thanks, man," Scott huffed to Stiles, who shrugged shamelessly. He turned to Mal and assured her, "It's really not that bad. I told you last night I was fine, and I am." At her 'Are you serious?' expression, he amended, "For the most part."

"Okay, let's see this thing," Stiles pushed, bouncing on the balls of his feet impatiently. Scott lifted his shirt a few inches to reveal a wound still bleeding through a makeshift bandage. "Ooh!" Stiles chirped, fascinated.

Mal wasn't as thrilled. "Jesus Christ! That's what you call 'fine'?"

"Yeah. It looks way worse than it really is," Scott lied, jerking back with a "Whoa!" when Stiles's fingers grazed the gauze and tape.

"You were saying?" Mal questioned defiantly.

Ignoring her, Scott released the corner of his shirt and claimed, "It was too dark to see much, but I'm pretty sure it was a wolf."

"A wolf bit you?" Stiles asked disbelievingly, laughing as the three friends made their way to the school building.

"Uh-huh."

"No, not a chance," he contested.

"I heard a wolf howling," the bitten boy claimed.

"No, you didn't," Stiles maintained as Mal interjected, "Not possible."

Scott scoffed. "What do you mean, no, I didn't? How do either of you know what I heard?"

"Because California doesn't have wolves," Mal explained while Stiles guffawed.

"Not in like 60 years," he concluded decisively.

"Really?"

"Yes, really. There are no wolves in California." Stiles rolled his eyes when Mal was looking.

Scott shook his head with uncertainty. "Alright, well if you don't believe me about the wolf, then you guys are definitely not gonna believe me 'bout when I tell you I found the body."

Stiles's face lit up. "You – are you kidding me?"

"Alone? Jeez, that must've been terrifying." Mal shuddered but refrained from interrogating him in an excessively mom-like fashion.

Scott grumbled, "I know, I'm gonna have nightmares for a month."

"Oh, god, that is freakin' awesome." Stiles was disturbingly energized by this news.

"Your horror fetish concerns me, Stiles," Mal half-joked, but he wasn't listening. In fact, he wasn't even looking at her.

"I mean, this is seriously gonna be the best thing that's happened to this town since – since the birth of Lydia Martin," he improvised in what he thought was a very smooth manner. "Hey, Lydia! You look…like you're gonna ignore me…" he trailed off, having gone unnoticed by the strawberry-blonde as she walked into and then out of his line of sight. Without a word. For the zillionth time. (Mal had kept count.)

Scott leaned around him, amused at Stiles and Lydia's lack of interaction. Mal crossed her arms and frowned, offended on her best friend's behalf, although she wasn't surprised.

"Scott, you're the cause of this, you know," Stiles accused after stomping his foot childishly.

"Uh-huh," the scapegoat played along, winking at his friends.

"Draggin' me down to your nerd depths. I'm a nerd by association. I've been scarlet-nerded by you," Stiles decided dramatically. "At least Mal's _sort of_ normal."

She snorted in ardent dispute. "Maybe it's the blazer. Huh, Stiles? A little extravagant for the first day of school, isn't it?" she teased.

Stiles immediately launched into defense mode. "Hey! I happen to like this blazer and – and you're screwing with me," he interrupted himself when he realized Mal was just kidding. Honestly, she liked his avant-garde sense of style, and she admired him for dressing to his own taste when he had such a crippling crush on someone.

"Besides, Lydia probably didn't even see it," Scott commented realistically. When Stiles started sulking, he clamped his lips together apologetically.

"Yeah, you're right," Mal agreed as they climbed the high school's front steps, thumping Stiles's back hearteningly. With conviction, she said, "It's her incurably dreadful personality that's the problem."

* * *

><p>Once homeroom was over and Mal had her semester schedule, she stopped by her locker to drop off the AP Psychology textbook she wouldn't need until after lunch.<p>

She sighed, contemplating what to do about her mom. Eventually, Mal shot her a text-turned-rant that read: _I'm sorry for this morning. I'll withdraw from the class if you really don't want me to take it. I can just take American History next year._ _Even though my stance on history classes is: what's the point? I mean, we all get the gist of it. And anyway, why is it so crucial that the American education system impose upon us that we stole someone else's land but not even mention how horrible it was for those people once we did? I've always thought history teachers were unreliable narrators._

Mal detested high school history, but more accurately, she sucked at it. She had the toughest time keeping all the dates, people, and places organized in her head, and it was all so _boring._ Stiles had offered to tutor her during their World History class freshman year, but she would've felt weird accepting his help. (_Separation of church and state_, she'd reasoned.) Part of why she'd chosen AP Psych was that it could replace 11th grade U.S. History. Now, she'd only have to deal with Economics 101 and AP Government, both of which she would figure out how to handle.

While the teacher had his back to the students, Mal slinked into her first period English class – another subject she only _just_ scraped through with passing grades. She slid into the chair of a desk next to Scott and in front of Stiles, which he'd reserved for her with his bag.

"What'd I miss?" she asked him.

"Nothing life-altering," he quipped dryly, thumbing through his copy of Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" inattentively.

"As you all know, there indeed was a body found in the woods last night," Mr. Curtis addressed his students. Scott smirked knowingly at his best friends, and Stiles winked back. "And I am sure your eager little minds are coming up with various macabre scenarios as to what happened. But I am here to tell you that the police have a suspect in custody." Mal arched an eyebrow at this. Both she and Scott turned to Stiles, but he didn't know who it was either. "Which means you can give your undivided attention to the syllabus which is on your desk outlining this semester."

Mal exhaled heavily and flipped through the packet on her desk. _Six essays, fantastic,_ she thought bitterly.

As she was skimming the paragraph on class conduct, the door opened and Vice Principal Hawkins walked through, a tall girl trailing after him and hiding her face behind a curtain of curly, dark brown hair.

"Class, this is our new student, Allison Argent," he introduced. "Please do your best to make her feel welcome."

The girl tugged at her sleeve timidly and shuffled to the back of the class, taking the only seat left, the one behind Scott.

Mal did her best not to stare at Allison, opposed to rendering her any more uncomfortable than she already was.

Scott, on the other hand, made no effort to exhibit the same restraint because not five seconds after Allison sat down, he swiveled around to hand her a pen. His _only _pen.

The new girl furrowed her eyebrows for a brief moment, but accepted it with a charming and appreciative, "Thanks."

Mal tapped Stiles's desk and tilted her head toward the brief but endearing exchange. "I might call _that _life-altering."

The corner of his mouth lifted noticeably.

"We'll begin with Kafka's 'Metamorphosis', on page 133," Mr. Curtis instructed, and so the semester began.

* * *

><p>The remainder of Scott's school day passed without incident. The rest of Mal's, on the other hand, didn't. She told Scott and Stiles about her first AP Psych class during last period gym while they were waiting to be separated into teams for basketball. They listened with sympathy as she described how strange it'd felt being back in her father's old classroom, when the last time she'd been there, he'd drawn an iceberg on the blackboard and attempted to teach her about Freud's structural model of the psyche – something, of course, that hadn't made any sense to the five-year-old girl he was explaining it to. And then she recounted to them how unexpectedly quickly she'd adjusted to it. "It was weird at first, but it didn't make me as sad as I'd expected," she divulged.<p>

When the last bell rang, Stiles dashed to his locker for his lacrosse gear while Scott and Mal ambled through the hallway.

"So…Allison Argent, huh?" she prompted, her grin stretching foolishly wide when Scott stuffed his hands in the pockets of his jeans and gazed intently at the ground. _Busted_, she thought. "She's a total babe, don't ya think?" she pestered, nudging him suggestively.

Scott shrugged at the lock on his locker, refusing to indulge his decidedly horrible best friend.

With perfect timing, Allison strolled up to her locker across the hall. Scott watched with puppy-dog eyes, and as she closed the door, she made eye contact with him and smiled crookedly, her own brown eyes twinkling. Mal purposely examined her nails so as not to intrude on the moment.

Lydia Martin, however, had a different idea. She strode the hallway to Allison confidently and struck up a conversation without invite. Mal scowled, and to make matters worse, "Jackhole" Whittemore then sidled up to Lydia, snaking an arm around his girlfriend's waist and planting a kiss on her lips. Not three feet from the discomfited new girl.

And now also in front of Stiles and their other good friend Rebecca "Harley" Harlowe, who'd found Mal regarding the amorous couple with distaste.

Slightly frustrated, Harley marveled aloud, "Can someone tell me how New Girl is here all of five minutes and she's already hanging out with Lydia's clique?"

"Dunno, but she looks severely uncomfortable. Or maybe I'm just projecting my general hatred of them onto her. Any chance she's realized how insufferable Jackson and Lydia are yet?" Mal spoke wistfully.

Stiles ignored her. "It's because she's hot," he asserted as if this was a sufficient answer.

"He means beautiful people herd together," she elaborated when Harley hitched an eyebrow.

"Which kinda makes me wonder what _you're _doing here with us," Stiles remarked half-teasingly, bumping Mal's shoulder with his but also curious as to why she didn't band together with the rest of the people he considered "too distractingly pretty to be legal in even the most left-wing states". (And yes, Jackson unfortunately fell into this category with his prominent jawline and cut-glass cheekbones.)

Mal pretended to gag. "Have you _met_ me? Lydia and Jackson are my least favorite people in the _world_. I'd even venture to say the worst people that have ever lived, period. As in, lower on the shit list than Bin Laden and Voldemort."

Stiles rolled his eyes at the extreme exaggeration, but Harley snickered. "And by the way, 'beautiful' means a lot more than red hair and green eyes," she tacked on.

Mal beamed reverently; Harley understood what was more important here.

"It's strawberry blonde! And I know there's more to her than that!" Stiles cried stubbornly.

Harley shook her head in astonishment but had to rush off to catch her bus, so she told Mal she'd swing by her house sometime that week and bid the others goodbye.

Mal crossed her arms and leaned against the lockers. "Eleven years, and I still don't understand you, man."

"Okay, fine. So she doesn't appear to be interested now," Stiles acknowledged grudgingly. "But ye of little faith, give me one year. Give me one year! She'll be smitten, I guarantee it."

"That's a distinct possibility should she unstick her head from up her ass. But don't hold your breath."

Mal glanced back at the subject of their discussion; Lydia was leading Allison away from her locker, surely toward the first lacrosse practice of the season.

Scott snapped out of his trance and regarded his friends with a start. "Oh hey, guys!"

"Welcome back to planet Earth!" Stiles announced, slugging Scott in the arm. "How was heaven, buddy? God as nice a dude as everyone says?"

"Shut up," Scott mumbled with a tiny smile.

With a trace of a smirk, Stiles turned to Mal. "You coming to practice?"

"Can't, I'm meeting up with Theo right now."

He'd texted her around lunchtime, _4 o'clock, burgers on you. And get your facts straight, wiseass. I also happen to own of__ a relatively decent pair of Levi's._

"He's back? For how long?" Scott asked.

"I'm assuming a couple of weeks. His vacation ends on the 24th."

"Lucky bastard," Stiles complained, dragging his feet. "We'll see you after, then? We have to find Scott's inhaler," he reminded her.

"Mhmm, text me when practice is over!" she called, running toward her brother's dark blue Honda Civic upon spotting him in the parking lot. Spinning back to her friends, she yelled out, "Oh, and Scott. You're gonna rock it!"

* * *

><p>Seemingly destitute of the basic essentials of human subsistence – clothing, food, and sleep – Theodore Durant appeared to have barely survived his first semester of grad school. An aspiring writer attending NYU's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, he was trying to get his master's degree in Comparative Literature but quickly burning out.<p>

"I hate it, Mal. I have two four-hour classes three times a week and one of those days is a Saturday. The professors always assign at least two-hundred pages of reading every night, and I haven't gotten drunk in four months," he groused after he and Mal found a cozy booth in the back of Toby's Diner.

"Ah yes, a decade in Theo years."

He disregarded the jab. "But…I love New York, and the lady has a death grip on my soul."

Mal took a bite of her veggie burger and chuckled at his dilemma. "Why are you here, then?"

"Because I missed you!" he squeaked, which was a strange sight. This haggard, 23-year-old man, who was sprouting a beard and dressed in tattered (not even "relatively decent") jeans and a faded sweatshirt, had just squeaked. "I don't know a damn thing about what's going on in your life. How are you?"

"I'm fine, but if you only came back to see me –"

"Oh no, I didn't. Let's be real, you're not cool enough for me to stick around for two weeks." Mal stuck her tongue out at him and he winked. "An old friend of mine from high school just got back to town – and I hate that I can actually call him 'old friend' because that technically makes _me_ old. But I figured we could hang out while we're both here."

"Who is this?"

"I doubt you'd remember him. And anyway, you're supposed to be catching me up on what's been happening with you," Theo badgered his sister.

"There's really not much to report," she insisted.

"Not much to report?" he repeated. "I have to disagree. What about that AP Psych class you're taking? That's a pretty big deal for our family, don't ya think?"

"How did you –" Mal began before realizing sourly, "Mom."

Theo popped a fry into his mouth. "Don't get pissed. I had to drag it out of her when she called today. After ten solid minutes of her yelling at me, if that makes you feel better."

"I asked her over break, and she seemed okay with it then," Mal sighed wearily. "It's a good class, I don't want to drop it."

"I think you just caught her off-guard this morning. She'll deal," he assured her. Due to the seven years Theo had on his younger sister, he understood their temperamental mother a lot more. "But that's enough of the unpleasant stuff. What shenanigans have you and your trollish friends gotten into?" he asked, affectionately implying Scott and Stiles. "Spray-painted anyone's pets lately?" he laughed.

In the 5th grade, Stiles and Mal had painted Theo's new gerbil gold, while Scott had stood guard. She'd renamed him, "M.C. Hamster", but her brother hadn't found it the least bit funny, then.

"No, but we did search the woods for a dead body last night."

Mal informed him of the previous night's events while he laughed, thoroughly engrossed.

"…and then he called and said he was fine, but I guess he walked all the way home 'cause Stiles and I were waiting for about an hour." For some reason, the idea of telling him about Scott's bite made Mal fidgety, so she ended the story there.

"You freaks never cease to amaze me," he half-insulted. "Hey, is Stiles still into that girl? The one who thinks he's a leper?"

"She'd have to admit he exists to think he's a leper," Mal corrected with a scoff. "But yes, sadly."

"Sadly?" Theo asked with the tiniest hint of something akin to hope.

"Yeah. She's shallow and mean and has a real superiority complex. I'm not saying she has to sleep with him or anything, just because he likes her and is a decent guy. If she didn't end up feeling the same, he would recover. The problem is her nose is so up in the air, it's practically glued to the ceiling. And in the rare moments it isn't, she's looking right through him. Stiles is wonderful, he deserves to be happy," Mal vented to her brother, who struggled to keep the smile off his face. "He deserves to fall in love with someone smart enough to love him back." She paused meditatively. "I wish he would, anyway."

"So do I," Theo agreed, staring quite pointedly at Mal.

She didn't catch on.

* * *

><p>When Theo dropped his sister off at the entrance to the preserve, he saw Stiles drumming his hands on the Jeep's steering wheel and bobbing his head jauntily to a song Mal had turned him on to a few days ago. Scott sat beside him in the passenger seat and stared dazedly out of the windshield, unmistakably daydreaming and not listening to the music.<p>

"Wow, they haven't changed at all," Theo observed, grinning.

Mal snorted and exited the Honda quietly, sneaking up to the driver's side window of the Jeep and knocking sharply on the glass. Scott flinched, but Stiles jumped about a foot in the air, bashing his head against the car roof. Mal winced empathetically but couldn't help sniggering.

He rolled down the window angrily when he realized who it was. "What the hell, _Mallory_?" he hissed her full name, massaging his scalp.

"_Aah girl, what are you thinking?_" she sang in perfect response as the song finished. While Scott chuckled at the lyric's appropriateness, Mal shrugged. "Sorry, Stiles, it had to be done."

Theo watched the interaction with mild amusement. "Hey, Trolls!" he greeted happily. Scott and Stiles waved back. "Listen, I'd love to stick around, but I think Mal's already one Durant too many." Stiles grunted in tacit agreement. "You weirdos have fun!"

Theo saluted his sister and her friends and backed his car out of the preserve.

"So, how was lacrosse?" Mal asked, leaves crunching underfoot as the trio started their trek through the woods. Scott furrowed his eyebrows, so she assumed it hadn't gone well. "It's okay, buddy. You have a whole season to –"

"That's not it, Mal," Stiles cut her off, oddly pleased.

"But – he looks confused…More so than typical," she noted.

Stiles gave her an account of their lacrosse practice's extraordinary events, how Scott had caught every single ball – even when the undeniably skilled and dexterous Jackson Whittemore tried to thwart him – only missing the first one because he hadn't been paying attention. "Scott was on fire, Mal! You should've seen it. Coach was totally speechless. It was freakin' incredible!"

"Really? How'd that happen?" Mal was skeptical. She'd seen him improve marginally over vacation but not enough to merit a speechless Coach Finstock, which was a remarkable feat on its own.

"Yeah, dude. I mean it was awesome, but what _was _that?" Stiles asked as they splashed through a large puddle in the mud. (Mal was glad she'd chosen to wear tall boots that day.)

"I don't – I don't know what it was. It was like I had all the time in the world to catch the ball," he tried to explain, pivoting to face his best friends. "And that's not the only weird thing. I – I can – hear stuff I shouldn't be able to hear. Smell things," he said worriedly.

"Smell things?" Stiles questioned with a healthy dose of doubt. "Like what?"

Scott sniffed the air. "Like the mint mojito gum in your pocket and Mal's olive oil and lemon chapstick."

Mal was thrown for a second, before remembering that Scott had already seen her put that chapstick on a million times. "But you already know I wear that stuff."

"I can still _smell_ it," Scott insisted.

"And I don't have any mint mojito –" Stiles started to deny but then pulled out a piece of gum. Mildly bemused, he stuffed it back in his pocket. "So all this started with a bite?"

Scott had been wondering all afternoon if the alleged wolf's bite had been the cause of everything bizarre that was happening to him now. "What if it's like an infection? Like, my body's flooding with adrenaline before I go into shock or something?"

"Shit, Scott. Maybe you should've had it checked out last night," Mal offered unconstructively. When his face contorted with displeasure, she backtracked. "It's not like you can't anymore. You're not dead yet." But that wasn't really helpful, either.

"You know what? I actually think I've heard of this. It's a specific kind of infection," Stiles began.

Scott jerked back, steadying Mal after she collided with him. "Are you serious?" he asked.

"Yeah. Yeah, I think it's called – lycanthropy," Stiles deadpanned.

Mal pursed her lips but didn't call him out on it, hoping Scott knew Stiles was messing with him.

"What's that? Is that bad?"

_Oh lord_, Mal thought, shaking her head when Scott couldn't see.

"Oh, yeah, it's the worst. But only once a month."

"No, Scott. Lycanthropy is not synonymous with menstruation." She stopped his train of thought before it could derail, noticing him glance back at her as if the "once a month" part meant he'd somehow acquired a uterus. "Jesus," she muttered in amazement.

"Once a month?" he reiterated.

Hands on his hips, Stiles maintained his composure, much to Mal's surprise. "Mhmm. On the night of the full moon." Scott pushed him when he howled playfully, so he pointed out, "Hey, you're the one who heard a wolf howling."

"Hey, there could be something seriously wrong with me," Scott justified.

"I know! You're a werewolf," Stiles mocked, growling for effect. "Okay, obviously I'm kidding. But if you see me in shop class trying to melt all the silver I can find, it's 'cause Friday's a full moon."

"Ugh, don't mind him. His point of reference is the horror genre. Why don't you ask your mom? She'd definitely know," Mal proposed.

Scott's mom, Melissa, was the most intelligent and levelheaded nurse she had ever met – and thanks to Stiles, she'd met a lot.

"Are you insane? She'd kill me sooner than heal me," Scott said definitively, making it clear that telling his mom about the night in the woods wasn't an option. He came to a halt where the trees gave way to a small clearing. "No, I – I could have sworn this was it. I saw the body, the deer came running. I dropped my inhaler."

He crouched down on the ground, clearing a pile of leaves to confirm that the device wasn't hidden beneath it.

"Maybe the killer moved the body," Stiles suggested.

"If he did, I hope he left my inhaler. Those things are like 80 bucks," he griped. Thinking the kick Mal gave his shoe was her disapproval of his callousness, he added, "Er, not that it's more important than someone's life."

It was a young man dressed entirely in black and standing only a few meters away that had diverted Mal's attention, however.

Stiles sighted him a couple of seconds after she did and tapped Scott to alert him. The two boys straightened up, while Mal peered closely at the raven-haired man, struggling to pinpoint why she vaguely recognized him.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, clearly feeling encroached upon. No one answered him, so he kept advancing on them.

Stiles repositioned himself to stand in front of Mal, stretching illogically to appear taller than he was and to hide her from view; the guy might've seemed threatening but he hadn't exactly pulled a gun on them.

"Huh?" he continued. "This is private property."

"Uh, sorry, man. We didn't know," Stiles apologized uncomfortably.

"Yeah, we were just looking for something, but – uh, forget it," was Scott's half-assed explanation.

The mysterious man threw Scott his inhaler, who caught it with a wary expression.

Mal tried to sidestep Stiles, but he just shifted with her when she moved, so she went around Scott instead, receiving a dirty look from her protective friends. "Thanks. It won't happen again," she promised the familiar man.

His eyes flashed for an instant, and she wondered if he'd recognized her, too, but he walked away before she could be sure.

"All right, come on, I gotta get to work," Scott announced, completely passing over what had just occurred.

"Dude, that was Derek Hale," Stiles exclaimed, stopping his best friend by putting a hand on his chest. "You remember, right? He's only like a few years older than us."

"Remember what?" Scott asked cluelessly.

Mal suddenly realized how she knew him. "His family. They all burned to death in a fire six years ago," she woefully recalled. "He was in Theo's year in school. They were friends." _And still are, I guess_.

"I wonder what he's doing back," Scott said.

Stiles shrugged, temporarily setting his interest aside. "Come on," he ushered his friends.

Scott followed him, but Mal stood there for a moment, staring in the direction Derek Hale had gone and puzzling over why someone who'd tragically lost his entire family in one day would want to come back to the place they'd perished.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: So I just wanna clarify: I LOVE LYDIA MARTIN. Admittedly, I didn't at first, but her character growth throughout the show is a testament to how awesome she is. Because she doesn't start out as this loveable character (or even likeable, a lot of the time). I hope this explanation isn't necessary but it's here if it is. Anyway, thanks for reading. You're a star and you hold the key to my heart! Review if you wanna, I'd love to know what you think of Mal so far and how she relates to Scott and Stiles. Thanks, lovelies!**


	4. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

_Downhill  
>Head on<br>This crash is comin' slowly  
>Move<em>

That Friday, Mal had study hall last period and could be found in the library working on a project for AP Psych. It was her first assignment of the year and one she was taking very seriously.

Theo had been wonderfully meddlesome enough to conciliate the dispute with their mom after Mal got back from the woods on the first day of school. He'd said it was just a class, and it wasn't worth putting a strain on their family; it didn't have to be a big deal as long as nobody made it one. ("Nobody" essentially meant Elaine, but he'd used the word to be diplomatic.) Her five-minute silence was disconcerting, but she dropped the subject altogether, unwilling to prolong the issue. Mal knew it was a huge compromise on Elaine's part, and her mother was still walking around the house like there were boards strapped to her legs, so for the rest of the week, she made dinner and washed the dishes and even did her mom's laundry. Everything within the Durant household was back to normal within a couple of days.

A few minutes before the final bell would ring, Mal was sitting at a table in the middle of the high school's library with her open textbook and a slew of index cards, feverishly taking notes that she could then create her "Parts of the Brain" sonnet with. She was brainstorming verbs that rhymed with "medulla oblongata" when Allison Argent wandered in, scanning the not-yet-familiar room for something. Her eyes brightened when she spotted the "Literature" sign on the back wall, and she marched toward it with such single-mindedness, she didn't even see Mal sitting right there at the center table.

Mal leaned her chair back after a few minutes, watching Allison peruse the shelves with her thumbnail between her teeth – visibly unable to locate the book she sought. "Want some help?"

Allison turned to her, surprised that somebody was studying in the library so close to the end of a Friday. Considerately, she answered, "Oh no, you're working. I don't wanna bother you," but the wistful look on her face suggested otherwise.

"It's no problem. I have to leave soon anyway," Mal assured her, coming to stand by the bookshelf Allison was browsing through. "What're you lookin' for? Kafka?" she presumed, reading the sign labeled "I – L".

"Oh, uh no. I actually have 'Metamorphosis' already. I was hoping there'd be a copy of Keats's collected works." Unsure if Mal knew that she meant the poet, Allison clarified, "His poems, I mean."

"Mhm, English Romanticism. I'm familiar," Mal confirmed with a smile (thanks to her writer-brother), skimming the shelves but ultimately finding nothing.

Discouraged, Allison grumbled, "Shoot, this is the fifth place I've tried."

"Huh, I was sure we had it. Maybe it's in the returns cart…although it's anybody's guess who reads voluntarily in this school – well, other than you – I'm assuming," Mal said speculatively.

Allison blushed lightly, scratching the back of her head self-consciously in a manner reminiscent of Stiles. "Yeah, I read for fun. Is that really lame?"

"Lame?" Mal repeated, nonplussed. "No. No. _Choosing _to be literate is not lame. You're doing what I don't have the attention span for, so really, I'm the lame one here."

She'd read Keats before, but certainly not as in depth as Allison was planning to, and she'd read very little for pleasure apart from that. Other than the standard Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings.

Allison smiled appreciatively. When they located the book under a copy of "The Merriam-Webster Dictionary", she sighed with contentment. "Thank you so much! I drove around for three hours last night practically hunting this down."

"Wow. That – that is dedication," Mal declared, thoroughly impressed.

"Um, no. _That_'s a veritable neurosis," Allison corrected. Mal snickered, and the witty new girl soon joined in.

"I get it, though. I did the same thing when my favorite band released an album a couple months ago."

The way Mal spoke was without reservation, and this greatly relieved Allison. It was comforting to know that people's interests in the town of Beacon Hills weren't limited to lacrosse.

"Oh, okay. Good. I'm not a weirdo, then."

"Well, you probably don't wanna be using me as a yardstick for normalcy, but I've always thought being a weirdo was more fun, if that helps," Mal said with an easy grin. "And on that note, I'm Mallory."

"Yeah, you're in my English class," Allison affirmed, perfectly comfortable letting Mal know she already knew her name.

"That, I am."

"I'm Allison."

"Yeah, you're in my English class," Mal mimicked playfully, but this wasn't the only way she'd been acquainted with the new girl.

Mal vividly recalled the shit-eating grin Scott had walked into school with three days ago. She thought he might've gotten a raise at work but never expected Beacon Hills Animal Clinic to be the place he'd ask out a girl for the first time. Scott had gushed about Allison to Mal, how she'd hit a dog with her car and cried on the clinic's doorstep ("Oh my god, is the dog okay? Is _Allison _okay?"), and _borrowed his shirt_ because hers was soaked through from the rain, and finally about her saying yes to attending Lydia's house party with him that Friday. Stiles had listened attentively at first but tuned Scott out when he described her eyes in excruciating detail for the third time, uncertain as to how exactly a person's eyelashes could be "goddess-like". Mal, however, had soaked in every word, feeling a lightness similar to being in zero gravity. She had never heard Scott talk about a girl like that before, had never known him to have such immediately passionate feelings for anyone.

Chatting with Allison now, she could see why he did; the girl was lovely. She smiled with her teeth and looked Mal in the eye confidently but without a trace of arrogance. Unlike the people she was quickly becoming friends with.

The one reservation Mal had about Allison Argent was that almost everywhere she'd seen her at school that week, she was with Lydia and Jackson, usually swarmed by half of the lacrosse team. At lunch or by one of their lockers, she'd be talking to the popular strawberry blonde, who would sometimes toss her hair back and laugh like she was being filmed, which slightly nauseated Mal.

But she'd keep an open mind for Scott, and anyway, how bad could Allison be when she had such beautiful taste in poetry?

"Whaddya think of Beacon Hills so far? Don't hold back, I can take it," Mal teased.

"It's no _Beverly_ Hills, but –"

" – that type of human does exist here," Mal finished for her. "And you appear to have fallen in with them."

The corner of Allison's mouth lifted faintly. "Looks that way. So…what do you think of Lydia and Jackson? Don't hold back, I can take it," she said with a subtly wicked expression.

"Hah, you want me to hold back. Trust me," Mal asserted with a scoff.

Allison winced. "Yikes, that bad?"

"You don't wanna get me started. Flailing arms and hissing are involved, and it takes a couple hours for the vein in my forehead to stop pulsating."

Allison gave Mal a look that was a cross between 'Okay, crazy girl. Relax' and 'Maybe I should've worn a Muumuu on the first day of school.'

"Lydia's been really nice, though, showing me around and introducing me to people. She even bought me a coffee this morning," she defended, hoping that Mal was just exaggerating.

"Did she give you a one-way, non-refundable ticket to her lair in hell with that coffee?" Mal inquired offhandedly.

Allison quirked an eyebrow, curious as to where Mal's substantial animosity toward Lydia had come from. _I've been here less than a week_, she thought, trying to remain objective. (Disliking Jackson, she could wrap her head around. Though she'd never say that out loud.)

"Maybe I dropped it somewhere." She shrugged good-humoredly as she bantered with Mal, who laughed pleasantly.

"I'm only being kind of serious. She seems to have taken to you a lot better than she has to the other 99.9% of the Beacon Hills population." A throng of excited students had begun filing out of the school at this point, so Mal said, "Listen, I gotta go, but it's nice to officially meet you."

Allison checked her phone for the time. "Oh. Yeah, of course. I have to meet up with –"

" – She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named?"

The new girl snorted. "Oh god, fine."

Mal gathered her things hurriedly, but as she dashed out the door, Allison called her back in. "Hey, wait! I know this is a long shot, but are you going to her party?" Mal offered a flinty look in response, but she continued, "I'm pretty sure it's open to everyone – not that that would be your concern."

"Yeah, it's not," Mal supported the assessment. Spying the slightly dejected expression Allison was trying to hide, she added, "But I might swing by for a song or two."

"Okay!" Allison accepted sweetly. "If I don't see you, have a good weekend. And thanks again for the book!"

"Any time," Mal beamed, glad she'd opted to spend her study hall in the library that day.

* * *

><p>Mal strolled the empty hallway, heading toward Scott's locker to meet up with him before his lacrosse practice. She was eager to witness for herself the highly enhanced athletic skills she'd heard about at great length, but the sight that greeted her as she turned the corner soured her mood.<p>

Jackson had his arm at Scott's throat and was aggressively shoving him against his own locker. "What the hell is going on with you, McCall?!" he roared.

"What's going on with me? You really wanna know?!" Scott cried back, frustrated.

Stunned at the outburst from the typically meek boy, Jackson released him and Mal stood motionless a few yards away.

"Well…so would I! Because I can see, hear, and smell things that I shouldn't be able to see, hear and smell. I do things that should be impossible, I'm sleepwalking three miles into the middle of the woods, and I'm pretty much convinced that I'm totally out of my freaking mind!" Scott ranted wildly, breathing laboriously at the end.

"Hey, leave him alone!" Mal shouted, deciding right then it was best to intervene. Underestimating his sturdiness, she tried and failed to shove Jackson away from Scott. "What's your problem, Whittemore?" she hissed, his name like ash in her mouth.

Glaring at the frazzled teammate he'd just attacked, he uttered to Mal in a dangerously low voice, "None of your damn business, Durant."

"When a pompous asshole harasses my friends, it's _absolutely_ my business," she objected, physically inserting herself between the two boys with her arms folded over her chest. "Back off!"

"Wow, McCall. Can't even fight your own battles. You have to get your equally pathetic girlfriend to do it for you," Jackson sneered, curling his lip at Mal. "Whatever, it doesn't matter. I know you're hiding something, and I'm gonna find out what it is. I don't care how long it takes," he threatened.

With one final, hostile glance at Scott and Mal, he strutted away.

Mal gave him the blackest of looks, praying there existed a divine being that would set him on fire right there in the middle of the hallway. But apparently, there didn't.

"Oooh, I _hate_ him! I truly and profoundly hate him!" she raged, spinning around to a moderately alarmed Scott. "Are you alright? What was that even about?"

He exhaled forcefully and replied, "He thinks I'm on steroids. I'm obviously so bad at lacrosse, drugs are the only way I did that good at the first practice."

She shook her head, too baffled to correct his grammar. "Steroids? That's ridiculous! You're just about the most upstanding guy I've ever met, possibly that's ever been born," she protested vehemently.

Mal wouldn't blink twice if someone showed her an anti-drug PSA starring Scott McCall.

"Apparently not," he said tiredly, unaffected by Jackson's bullying after years of having to deal with it. He'd been a douchebag for as long as Scott had known him.

"God, what a bag of dicks!" Mal fumed, clenching her fists in the direction Jackson had sauntered off.

"Hey, it isn't a big deal. Not like he'll find anything, right?" Scott comforted.

Mal was outraged, when the situation really only called for mild irritation.

She turned to him, affronted by the mere question. "Of course not! But that doesn't give him the right – I mean, Jesus! – The nerve –" she spluttered, too furious to speak properly.

Scott laid a kind hand on her shoulder. "He's always been the stick up his own ass, you know that. Don't let him get to you."

Mal thought it strange that she was the one who needed to be talked down.

"C'mon, let's go. I'm playing the first elimination today," he announced, brushing aside the unpleasant subject of Jackson Whittemore and ushering his friend to the field.

But as they walked, she thought of something else. "When did you sleepwalk three miles into the middle of the woods?"

"Um, Monday night," he confessed, shrinking back guiltily. The disturbed expression on Mal's face persuaded him to begin make excuses. "Wait, though, it's really not that bad. A lot of people sleepwalk. Stiles used to do it in middle school, right?"

"He – that's different," Mal justified weakly, disinclined to tell Scott the reason behind it; that was Stiles's prerogative. She took a deep breath to relax and attempted to convince him to see a doctor. "Look, Scott. Something…freaky is obviously happening to you because of that bite – which mysteriously vanished in less than twenty-four hours, by the way," she pointed out.

Scott had shown her and Stiles his newly unblemished torso after raving about Allison but had again avoided to impart an incredibly significant piece of that night to them.

"And I really think you need to get some help now," she pressed.

Scott blew air out of his mouth in denial and dropped his lacrosse bag next to the player's bench, bending down to tie the laces of his cleats. "No, that's exactly why I _don't_ have to. The bite's gone, and I'm fine. In fact, I'm better than fine. I'm fantastic! So if it's okay with you, Your Highness, I'm gonna –"

"Scott! Mal!" Stiles's piercing voice rang out as he careened around the bleachers with urgency basically scrawled all over his face. "Scott, wait up!"

"Stiles, I'm playing the first elimination, man. Can it wait?" he requested, putting his gloves on.

"Look – just hold on, okay? I overheard my dad on the phone. The fiber analysis came back from the lab in L.A. They found animal hairs on the body from the woods!" he informed his friends, smacking Scott's shoulders to capture his attention, only to go unheeded.

Scott ran onto the field with an, "I gotta go, guys," and Stiles fell over himself in a frenzied effort to pull him back.

"Wait, no! Scott! You're not gonna believe what the animal was!" he hollered desperately before turning to his other best friend, who was gawking at him like he had fifty heads. "It was a wolf! Mal, there were wolf hairs on the girl's body!"

She exhaled and planted her hands firmly on his shoulders to steady him. "Okay – Stiles? You probably just misheard your dad. Wolves haven't been in Beacon Hills for decades, remember? You said so yourself," she reminded him, using the relatively patronizing tone Stiles hated.

"Well that's changed, then, because my dad definitely said 'wolf'," he swore, holding his ground – but only metaphorically. Mal was the one balancing him in the corporeal sense.

"Look, I'm a hundred percent with you about his…recently established weirdness. But _wolf_ hairs? Come on!" she exclaimed, tilting her head skeptically. "Besides, the bite was too large for it to've been a wolf," she reasoned, calling to mind the size of the bandage Scott had fashioned.

Stiles inspected the lacrosse field as if acceptable answers would pop up out of the ground and prove to Mal exactly what she refused to believe.

"It just – Okay, we are not done talking about this," he promised, having been forced to take off to the middle of the field by a Coach Finstock who was almost abusing his whistle to marshal the team into a huddle. Whirling around so he could run backward and then stumbling over his heels, Stiles restated, "This conversation isn't over!"

Mal rolled her eyes but nodded to humor him before searching the bleachers for Harley, who sometimes liked to keep her company during their friends' practice. (It was the only time they could get new music from each other.)

But instead, she identified another friendly face among the amassing crowd. Allison waved at Scott gleefully as Mal threaded her way through the gathering of students.

"You again!" she cried dramatically, plunking herself down on the same bleacher as the other brunette, who smiled brilliantly at her in return.

"Now get out there and show me – what – cha got!" came Coach's booming voice, which was audible even from the stands.

Allison raised an eyebrow and asked, "Is he always so, uh…?"

"Intense?" Mal inferred. "Yeah. He's, um, pretty – _passionate_ about lacrosse?" she ventured hesitantly, eliciting a snort from the girl next to her. "Actually, he's intense about everything."

"You're here for Scott and Stiles, right?" Allison assumed.

In an attempt to lessen her guilt at the clinic, Scott had told her how Stiles had struck a squirrel on his skateboard and plowed into a tree in the 6th grade. Allison had dissolved into laughter when she heard that Mal had almost given the creature mouth-to-mouth to try and calm her friend down enough to take him to the hospital for stitches. ("You're not as dumb as they are, so there's that," Scott had chuckled.)

"Yup, they're my best buds," she crowed.

"How long have you guys known each other?"

"Oh man, we go way back. I've known Stiles since kindergarten and Scott since…" She pondered the answer for a second. "Hmmm…we met in 4th grade, I think."

"Wow," Allison remarked, unable to imagine being in a place long enough to have such lasting friendships. She'd been drifting from city to city practically her entire life.

"Yeah, but it's not hard to get along with them. They're really good guys. Scott actually reminds me a lot of my brother." Mal phrased it in such a way that Allison would understand she and Scott were unambiguously platonic without outright saying it and making either of them feel awkward. "He's considerate and easy-going and _so _much fun to be around."

"You sound like you could be his dating profile," Allison joked, appreciably more relaxed.

"Which _you _would read exhaustively, am I right?" Mal retorted, turning back to the players and smirking when the smitten girl's mouth opened but no reply came. A second later, she pointed across the field where Jackson had just violently checked Scott with his lacrosse stick. "See? This is why I don't like him!" To the snotty lacrosse captain, she screamed, "Go to hell, Whittemore! That was so uncalled for!"

She didn't need to defend Scott after that, though; he'd stepped up his game, deftly weaving the ball around opposing players and then sincerely shocking every teammate and spectator by flipping clean over _three_ people to successfully shoot the ball between the goalie's legs and into the net. He pumped his fists in the air as a handful of his teammates circled him, while Allison sprang up, clapping delightedly.

"Scott, you rock!" Mal cheered loudly once she'd gathered her wits, relishing Jackson's evident aggravation as Coach congratulated Scott and appointed him to first line.

She basked in her bliss for hardly a minute, however, glimpsing the fiery hair that belonged to Lydia and then Stiles rubbing his chin anxiously on the bench.

"Uh, I have to go," she murmured to Allison, while the strawberry-blonde came to a halt making an abnormally ugly face.

Mal didn't pause to give her the snide remark she would've liked to (something along the lines of, "I'd say it's a pleasure to see you, but then I might as well call grass 'blue' and terrorism 'amusing'. If I'm going to completely disregard conventions of the English language.")

"Hope I see you at the party," Allison whispered to Mal, wary of the nettled girl on her other side.

"Allison, why were you talking to that _mutant_? She's not someone you should associate yourself with if you actually _want _people to think you're compos mentis," Lydia warned with patent condescension while Mal was still within earshot.

Allison frowned disappointedly.

Mal hurried over to Stiles, guffawing. "Wow, you have impeccable taste in girls. What a gem, that one," she commented sardonically, jerking her thumb toward his long-time crush. His resulting glower extracted only a half-assed apology from her. "Sorry, just God's honest truth."

He ignored her, staring at Scott worriedly. He had too much on his mind to be wounded by yet another one of Mal's digs at Lydia.

"My house, two hours. Don't be late," he ordered, stomping off without another word.

* * *

><p>"All right, Stiles. What's with the nerves? Scott did great today!" Mal praised, entering her best friend's messy room.<p>

Stiles's bedroom was always pretty disorganized, but at the moment, it was hard for her to even distinguish the floor under the clutter of books and news articles.

Sweeping some of them aside, she conceded, "So he won't be sitting on the bench with you, and that'll suck. But I'm usually there on the bleachers anyway. I'll just sneak down when Coach isn't looking."

"That's not why I'm freaking out!" Stiles screeched, furiously typing away on his computer.

"Then what's the problem? What are you doing, anyway?" she inquired, moving closer to peer over his shoulder. " 'Silver bullet'? 'Lycaon'?" she repeated what she read. "Why are you Googling werewolf myth –"

Mal stopped mid-sentence, realization washing over her as Stiles swiveled in his chair looking uncomfortable.

"Mal, hear me out," he entreated, guiding her to the foot of his bed and sitting her down before rifling through a stack of papers for an article he could use to substantiate his theory.

"Oh no. No, no, no! Stiles, this is nuts. This – you're – you've finally cracked," she stammered, glancing dreadfully around the room at the various book titles. "Lycanthropy: The Howling Wolf", "Werewolvery For Beginners" and "The Meaning of Lunatic" were among them.

"Just listen to me," he implored, striding over to Mal and crouching down beside her as she flopped back onto his mattress with her thumb and middle finger pressed to her temples. He didn't let her stay like that, tugging her once more into a seated position and resting his forearms firmly on her lower thighs to focus her concentration. "You _have_ to listen to me."

"Have to?! This is a whole new level of insanity, even for you!" she squawked, painfully aware of his seriousness.

"Look, I know it's insane, but –"

"I find that incredibly hard to believe, Stiles," she stopped him.

Mal very openly accepted that what had happened to Scott was extremely unusual, but the reason had to be grounded in scientific fact. Perhaps an undiscovered strain of the rabies virus Stiles had joked about before.

"Among other things," he countered emphatically.

"Huh, I wonder why? I mean, is anyone else we know a mythological creature? Harley a witch? Lydia a fairy? Maybe my brother's secretly a dragon?" she asked sarcastically.

"Well…I _do _kinda think could be an Uruk-hai. Minus the guile and dark skin," he replied with inappropriate pensiveness, starting when someone knocked on his door.

Mal groaned. "Please tell me you didn't call Scott. He has his first date with Allison tonight! He doesn't need an even higher dose of our crazy than usual," she begged uselessly as Stiles collected himself and opened the door.

Seeing who it was, he huffed and beckoned a greatly amused Scott into the room. "Get in. You gotta see this thing. I've been up all night reading – websites, books. All this information!" he explained, waving his arms frenetically.

Mal ran her hands through her hair in frustration and let out a heavy sigh. "Do yourself a favor. Run for it while you still can," she advised.

Scott furrowed his eyebrows for a second and half-teased his hyperactive friend, "How much Adderall have you had today?"

"A lot. Doesn't matter. Okay, just listen."

"I wouldn't if I were you. He's lost his mind," Mal cut in before receiving a silencing look from Stiles.

"Oh, is this about the body? Did they find out who did it?" Scott asked, settling down next to Mal.

"No, they're still questioning people, even Derek Hale," Stiles revealed.

"What?!" Mal shouted, taken aback by this previously unknown piece of information.

"Oh, the guy in the woods that we saw the other day," Scott said almost uninterestedly, like they were discussing algebra homework and not severed bodies.

Trying to steer his friends away from that tangent, Stiles responded, "Yeah! Yes. But that's not it, okay?"

"What, then?" Scott questioned with a laugh.

"No, hang on! Why is he even a _suspect_?" Mal yelped, beginning to fret about her brother. There was no way Theo knew about Derek's involvement in a homicide investigation; he was planning on paying the man a visit, after all.

"I don't know! I'm not even sure he's been accused of anything, but – That is not the issue here, Mal. Just let me talk!" She growled but then clamped her lips together cooperatively, so that Stiles could continue. "Remember the joke from the other day? Not a joke anymore. The wolf – the bite in the woods. I started doing all this reading. Do you even know why a wolf howls?"

Stiles shot up from his chair, and Scott followed him with his eyes. "Should I?"

"It's a signal, okay? When a wolf's alone, it howls to signal its location to the rest of the pack. So if you heard a wolf howling, that means others could have been nearby. Maybe even a whole pack of 'em," he elaborated.

Mal had to admit _that_ was interesting but did so, of course, only to herself.

"A whole pack of wolves?" Scott recapped.

"No. Werewolves," Stiles corrected.

Mal grimaced. "Here we go."

Peering between his undeniably idiotic friends, Scott stood up and cried, "Are you seriously wasting my time with this? I mean, first Mal wants to cart me off to an insane asylum and now you think I'm a _werewolf_? You guys know I'm picking up Allison in an hour."

"I'd _never _'cart you off' anywhere!" Mal asserted, crossing her arms defensively.

"We saw you on the field today, Scott." Stiles blocked his escape, dragging Mal into it as if she'd somehow replaced 'Stiles has gone off the deep end' with 'Scott equals werewolf' in the last five minutes. "Okay, what you did wasn't just amazing, all right? It was impossible."

"Yeah, so I made a good shot." Scott was slightly offended that no one seemed to think he could've become such a capable athlete simply by practicing as regularly as he had – although even _he_ knew that wasn't true.

"No. You made an incredible shot!" Stiles yelled in exasperation, preventing his friend from leaving by throwing his bag on the bed. "I mean – the way you moved, your speed, your reflexes. Y'know, people can't just suddenly do that overnight. And there's the vision and the senses, and don't even think I don't notice that you don't need your inhaler anymore."

Mal scrunched up her forehead in contemplation. She hadn't the patience to listen to him a few minutes ago, but her curiosity was currently mounting by the second. When he said it altogether, she had to acknowledge that it made a little sense. In addition, the adrenaline Scott had suspected was the cause of everything would've worn off by now, and he'd have already gone into shock if that were the case. Mal hadn't noticed he wasn't using his inhaler anymore, but that only reinforced what she was starting to consider. Moreover, no disease she knew of had _improved_ breathing as a side effect.

Tentatively, she spoke her mind. "You know, he – he might have a point."

Overlooking their previous quarreling, Stiles pulled her up by the arms and with a determined expression, presented her to Scott like she was solid proof. "See? Even Mal thinks so, and she's the one who generally has her head screwed on straight. If she believes me, then so should you!"  
>"Whoa!" she interrupted. "I didn't say I <em>believe<em> you. We don't know for sure what's going on with Scott."

Stiles face briefly went blank in an 'I'm seeing red' sort of way. "Holy god, please make up your mind! You are the most indecisive person I've ever met!" he accused melodramatically.  
>"Look, I have no idea what's happening to him. All I'm saying is that maybe, <em>maybe<em>, there might be a tiny chance he's…um…no longer technically, fully human," she stalled, reluctant to make a definitive statement.

"Okay, stop! Guys, I can't think about this now. We'll talk tomorrow," Scott tried to delay, averse to thinking about the possibility – however remote – that he was a werewolf. After all, he had a date with the girl of his dreams in less than an hour; there were more pressing things on his mind, like which of his jeans didn't have a hole in the butt and whether or not his mom would let him stay out an hour or two past curfew just this once.

"Tomorrow?!" Stiles shrieked, still holding Mal and now shaking her. She jerked away from him and rubbed her arms, as he objected, "No! The full moon's tonight. Don't you get it?"

"What are you trying to do?" Scott barked, doubtful of their good intentions. "I just made first line. I got a date with a girl who I can't believe wants to go out with me, and everything in my life is somehow perfect. Why are my so-called _best friends_ trying to ruin it?"

"We _are _your friends. That's why we wanna help you," Mal defended levelheadedly.

"You're cursed, Scott. You know, and it's not just the moon will cause you to physically change. It also just so happens to be when your bloodlust will be at its peak," Stiles informed them.

"Bloodlust?" the other two teens asked in unison, Scott with annoyance and Mal with just plain ignorance.

"Yeah, the urge to kill."

"I'm already starting to feel an urge to kill, Stiles," Scott warned, shocking Mal. He'd never spoken to anyone that way. Ever.

"Okay, I think we all need to cool it a little," she cautioned, placing a palm against his chest but also staring pointedly at Stiles.

"No, Scott has to hear this," he protested, opening a book and quoting from one of its passages, "'the change can be caused by anger or anything that raises your pulse.'" Spinning around, he exclaimed, "All right? I haven't seen anyone raise your pulse like Allison does. You gotta cancel this date. I'm gonna call her right now." He charged at Scott's backpack, yanking out his phone.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm canceling the date," he reiterated, about to dial Allison's number when Scott did the absolute worst thing Mal had ever seen him do.

"No, give it to me!" he bellowed, slamming Stiles against the wall, a snarl tarnishing his countenance and a fist aimed at the defenseless boy in front of him.

"Scott, stop!" Mal screamed, beholding Stiles in despair. He had squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for a blow that, fortunately, would never come.

Mal lunged forward to pull Scott off of him but had to dodge the desk chair he took his anger out on instead. Hurled aside savagely, it missed her by an inch.

He panted noisily, remorse replacing his previous snarl, while Stiles's shoulders sank in relief. The following couple of seconds felt unending and were palpably tense, but Scott finally stuttered out his regret. "I'm sorry. I – I gotta go get ready f – for that party."

Clutching his backpack, he trudged toward the door, but Mal barred the exit. "You can't be serious! You were going to punch _Stiles_! What's the matter with you?!" she thundered.

"I'm sorry," he repeated sincerely, reaching out for Mal's shoulder.

She dodged him, wanting to make sure Stiles wasn't hurt and still upset that Scott had almost hit their best friend. She ghosted her fingers over Stiles's cotton t-shirt, exposed neck, and then the back of his head to check for damage. As she did so, he watched her, absorbed in dismal thought.

Scott couldn't bear to look at them, so he left, truly miserable about what he'd nearly done to the one guy in his life who'd only ever been there for him and angry at himself for letting Mal down because of it.

When Stiles thumped his head against the wall unhappily, she drew him in for a hug, patting his back softly. He rested his chin on top of her shoulder, and they held each other, untroubled for a short while. He reveled in the immediate stillness he felt, before letting go to pick up the fallen chair.

All sense of peace dissipated when he discovered three jagged tears on the back.

"Uh, Mal, you need to see this." He moved out of the way to show her.

"Oh, God," she breathed, her eyes bulging in terror as she swallowed the lump in her throat.

Examining the claw-like marks, she concluded that a human couldn't have possibly created them. But the whole afternoon still felt surreal, so she grazed her finger pads over the slashes, nearly tripping over her feet after flinching back at the fleeting metallic tang in her mouth.

Shaken and wholly uncertain about what to do, she mumbled, "I think it's safe to say you told me so."

Stiles snatched up the car keys from his desk and handed Mal her backpack. "We have to go to that party. We have to protect him," he urged. Under the circumstances, it was understandable that he didn't sound thrilled at the prospect of seeing Lydia.

"And Allison," Mal said in agreement, slipping her arms through her coat sleeves.

As Stiles backed the Jeep out of his driveway, she realized with unease what the sharp taste had been: fresh blood.


	5. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: The beautiful song mentioned too many times below not to explicitly state the name of is called "Keep the Car Running" and belongs to Arcade Fire, a life-altering band. (I strongly suggest you listen to the song while you read the scene it accompanies. There's a link on my profile if you need it.)

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

_They know my name 'cause I told it to them  
>But they don't know where and they don't know when<br>It's coming, oh, when, but it's coming,  
>Keep the car running<em>

The Jeep flew in the direction of Lydia's house for about twenty seconds before Stiles realized it was only 7:30 and Scott probably hadn't even gotten home yet. He told Mal he'd drop her off at her place so she could get ready for the party, to which she petulantly replied, "It's a Friday night, and I'm being forced to hang out in the _devil's_ company. I honestly couldn't care less what she – or anyone else – sees me in."

"Mal, you have to at least _pretend_ you want to be there," Stiles demanded, twitching ever so slightly and resenting her inability to cooperate with him.

"Oh, I really don't think so. I'm only going to this thing for Scott. 'Black tie' and 'enjoyment' optional," she stubbornly argued.

Nine minutes later, she found herself being shunted out of his car.

"If you're not wearing something nice when I get back here, I will dress you myself like you're a frickin' three-year-old," he threatened her. "You've got half an hour."

"This is so uncool, Stiles!" she called after him as he tore off down her street.

She hauled herself into her room grumpily but perked up at the very welcome surprise lying on the bed with her legs crossed behind her and a fist pressed against her cheek, reading Mal's copy of "The Hobbit".

"Harley! How'd you –"

"Through the window," Harley answered without so much as a glance up, casually flipping a page like it was perfectly normal that she'd broken into her friend's second-story room.

"Oh sure, the window…You know, you're becoming more like Stiles every day," Mal notified with a smirk, proceeding to tunnel through her closet for something house-party-appropriate.

"Ouch, that's mean," Harley laughed, setting the book down and rolling onto her side. "Hey, is your brother here?" she asked, wiggling her eyebrows naughtily.

Mal panicked fleetingly, uncertain of Theo's whereabouts and extremely conscious of the possibility that he was hanging out with a potential killer. But she pushed down her fright, taking into account that she knew too little to judge someone the police could've been questioning for any number of reasons. _What do I know about Derek Hale?_ Mal rationalized.

Relaxing, she poked her head around the door. "Dear God, please don't do this again. You know Theo's gay," she reminded the infatuated girl, who shrugged blithely.

"You never know. What if he saw me one day and thought, 'Huh, I never noticed it before, but I just want to rip Harley's clothes off'? … I'm choosing to remain optimistic."

Mal made a distinct gagging noise as she rooted around the heap of clothes on the floor to unfetter her favorite skirt, the one that was cute _and _comfortable. "Eugh, I am now _begging_ you to stop talking about my very man-loving brother."

Harley stuck her tongue out at Mal's back but said, "Fine…at least tell me you changed your mind about Lydia's thing tonight. 'Cause I kind of wanna go. But only if you and Stiles are there."

"Unfortunately," Mal blurted before she could stop herself, feigning nonchalance as she trod out of the closet with her selected outfit.

But Harley knew better and was blinking in disbelief. "Oh, really? I always thought your golden rule was to never go anywhere on a weekend that put you within a ten foot radius of Lydia Martin."

"Um, it usually it. But…Scott has his date with Allison. His _first_ date. So, I'm making an exception – just this once – for moral support," Mal lied, passably but without polish.

Incredibly enough, Harley accepted the pretext. "All right, weirdo. Can I borrow your grey jeans, then? The pair without holes?"

Relieved, Mal nodded her permission. "Bottom drawer," she said, vacating her bedroom to shower and change. Scrubbing her body and shampooing her hair vigorously, she meditated on the day's events.

There was a ninety percent chance Scott was a lycanthrope, and that was Mal's conservative estimate. His senses were enhanced; he'd sleepwalked the night after he was bitten; he'd acquired the agility of an acrobat overnight, as demonstrated by his performance during lacrosse eliminations; he'd almost assaulted Stiles; and most convincing among all of the reasons Scott had to be a werewolf were the three scratches on the back of Stiles's desk chair. Mal couldn't begin to understand the nonexistent blood she'd tasted in her mouth when she'd touched the claw marks, but it cemented her sensation of foreboding. The impending full moon tied all of the facts together, and anything that happened to Scott that night would, in all likelihood, prove that Stiles's theory wasn't the least bit far-fetched.

While that freaked her out, Mal knew it was crucial that she maintain her composure (or what was left of it, anyway). Especially with Harley on the other side of the wall.

Stiles was right; she had to pretend she wanted to be at Lydia's party, at least until – _No, not thinking about that right now_, she decided.

Mal dried off and threw her clothes on, setting aside the dread that had stemmed partially from the prediction that she'd be awkwardly standing around in Lydia's backyard with a cup of "beer" in less than two hours while Stiles either stared at the strawberry blonde and her jock boyfriend groping each other or Scott and Allison trying to enjoy their first date.

It would ordinarily have comforted her to know that Harley would be there as well, but in this particular case, it only made her anxious; she didn't need additions to the list of people she'd have to somehow protect. Which was yet another concern that Mal had to sweep under the metaphorical carpet.

Her blow-drier made a distracting and much-appreciated racket, allowing her to get ready in relative peace. She tied half of her hair up to uphold Stiles's pretense of caring and smoothed out the imaginary wrinkles in her top, taking a deep and fortifying breath.

When Mal slinked out of her bathroom, Harley legitimately wolf-whistled. "Nevermind a stick, you're gonna have to beat guys off with the whole tree trunk. And definitely a couple girls, too."

Mal shook her head laughingly as she rummaged through her jewelry box for the Christmas present Mrs. McCall had given her a few weeks ago.

"I swear my clothes still look better on you, though," she said admiringly, fastening the beaded necklace and earrings in place and giving Harley a once-over that would've made her friend positively glow had it come from the older Durant instead.

"Can you believe Scott finally has a date with a girl? A real _human_ girl?" Harley asked, her snicker hindered by the adept fingers that were smearing on lip-gloss in the bathroom mirror. Pleased, she smacked her lips and worked on Mal's make-up next, even applying a touch of blush on her friend's cheeks. "And before either one of _us_, too," she added as an afterthought.

Momentarily forgetting her vexation with Scott, Mal smiled tenderly. "Yeah, I can. He's one of the good ones."

Ruminating on their dispute in Stiles's room, she wondered if maybe she'd been too harsh with Scott. After all, he was more than likely going to develop fangs and claws within a few hours, in which case his awful behavior could only be attributed to the "bloodlust" Stiles had made them aware of. Scott would need his best friends by his side, now more than ever, and Mal was determined not to abandon him. Regretfully, she reminded herself that that was what had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

A honk from Mal's driveway yanked her out of her brooding. "That'll be Stiles. Want a ride?"

"Nah, I've got the car today. And like most sixteen-year-old, Mal, I love having my license," Harley baited her, arms folding judgmentally.

Mal had been eligible to drive for quite awhile, having turned sixteen in October, but was too impatient to undergo thirty-six hours of Driver's Ed classes and too lazy to study for the actual test.

"Well, aren't you all _so_ special?" she rejoined, glaring back at Harley as they descended the stairs. Her attitude toward driving at her age was, 'Why bother when you can bum rides off of your best friends?' Mal figured that between the three of them, two licenses were plenty.

Harley zipped up her hoodie and smirked. "Granted, if I had Scott and Stiles to chauffeur _me_ around, I probably wouldn't bother with it, either."

Mal pursed her lips, stuffing her wallet and cell phone into the pockets of her brown pea coat. "I'm pretty sure they're just being Good Samaritans and trying to save the world from my atrocious driving," she defended, opening the front door to let Harley through after tugging on a pair of brown boots.

"Oh, so Stiles _wouldn't_ take you to India and back? Just for the hell of it?" she confidently countered while Mal grinned idiotically. Sharing a wave with the boy in the Jeep and then ducking into her Ford Escape, Harley said, "Tell the goober I want my Tune-Yards CD back!"

She sped off toward the party before she could see Mal's exaggerated eye-roll.

"She wants her Tune-Yards CD back," Mal relayed to Stiles as she removed her coat and buckled her seatbelt.

Peering up at him, she discovered his hazel eyes practically boring holes in her outfit. Twice, they wandered with patent appreciation over her teal cropped tank top and green circle skirt. Her clothes were modest, but the top had ridden up a little once she'd sat down, and Stiles's gaze was now lingering unintentionally on her exposed middle back.

"You – you clean up – you look – well," he gauchely observed after clearing his throat. Mal distinctly heard him mutter, "Shit", to himself before he hurriedly explained, "That wasn't – I didn't – what I mean is, you clean up well."

She smiled crookedly, relaxing her spine and disregarding how it had stiffened while he'd been examining her so intently. "Through coercion," she cleverly replied. Noting his light pink button-down, black tie and grey slacks, she added, "But so do you. New shirt?"

"We might have to be on Werewolf Watch tonight, but that doesn't mean we can't look irresistible doing it," Stiles justified with a small smirk, sliding back into easy conversation with best friend and slackening his oddly tight grip on the steering wheel.

As he peeled out of the driveway, Mal chuckled but then puffed out a breath, her stress returning all at once. "About that. What's the protocol for protecting a bunch of teenagers from a fledgling werewolf? I mean, is there some sort of plan or do we just kinda wing it?"

"Um. Well, I was thinking we keep an eye on him until he does something…lycanthropic," Stiles answered insufficiently. When Mal squinted at him skeptically, he drily declared, "_Sorry_, I must've lost the instruction manual." Mal sniffed at his sarcasm, but he carried on. "A day ago, this whole thing was one huge joke. And anyway, _you_ only believed me after Round 1 of 'Scott's Cranky Times'!"

Mal cringed, dragging a hand down her face. "Because this stuff isn't supposed to be real, Stiles. We're supposed to watch movies about it that scare us for a couple of seconds. Not physically live it!" she exclaimed agitatedly.

Stiles groaned. "I'm aware of that, but – there's no point denying it anymore, okay? He's a supernatural beast, and we just have to deal," he sighed, his countenance transparently overwrought.

Mal dipped her head and defeatedly slouched against her seat in response, finally coming to grips with the fact that there would be no controlling the imminent mayhem. None at all.

* * *

><p>The party was in full swing when Stiles and Mal arrived at Lydia's house. The trendy girl had a predictably large home, currently overflowing with rambunctious teenagers, which was strange because more than half of them were still mostly sober. Several people were loitering on the front lawn, some of them smoking weed and apparently having a good time – if their loud giggling at the tiny, black-and-white Papillon yapping at them were any indication. Music was blaring out of the house and could surely be heard a couple blocks down; Mal almost couldn't comprehend why not a single one of the neighbors had complained or called the cops yet. Especially since she'd been able to smell marijuana from <em>inside <em>the Jeep. But then she realized that Lydia must've always had parties this wild and that maybe everyone was used to them by now.

It was partly because Stiles needed to escape the stench that the pair wandered into the house. Mal scanned the foyer and living room for the familiar mop of dark brown hair that belonged to her other best friend. Unable to locate him, she shared a nervous glance with Stiles, who clutched the hem of her coat sleeve and steered her through the horde of high schoolers and out onto Lydia's patio.

The music had reached the level of noise found only at a concert, so she shouted, "Can you see him? Or Allison?"

Mal wasn't that short; she stood at a respectable 5'5". But Stiles had the advantage of an extra six inches and could easily exploit them to survey the crowd.

"I don't think they're here yet," he yelled in return, directing her back inside in order to talk to her properly. At a loss for where else to look, he asked her, "Whaddya wanna do now?"

"Stab pins in my face," she griped, shoving her hands into her coat pockets and inspecting the ceiling with apathy.

Stiles exhaled sadly, positive that Mal would rather have been lounging on her bed with her laptop and the latest _Gorillaz_ album. "I get that standing in Lydia Martin's hallway is your worst nightmare or whatever. But we're at this shindig, right? Can you please _try _to have some fun?"

Mal snorted as a grudging smile made its appearance. "Play now, work later?"

Stiles winked in reply. "Want a Coke?" he thoughtfully offered, mindful of his companion's abstinence from alcohol. While the imprudent behavior it engendered didn't bother her in the slightest, the vileness of the taste certainly did.

"Yeah, thanks."

"Wait here," he commanded, leaving her alone to race toward the table of drinks by the pool.

This turned out to be an incredibly bad idea when Lydia swooped in on Mal not five seconds afterward, dressed to perhaps literally kill. "What are you doing here?" she demanded testily.

"Um, what does it look like? Partying. Having a rollicking good time. Roistering, if you will," Mal deadpanned, standing around quite as awkwardly as she'd previously guessed. Fortunately, she managed to hide her fidgeting from Lydia, who narrowed her eyes, unsurprisingly displeased.

"The invitation was open to Homo sapiens only," she snapped, placing her hands on her hips.

Mal bit her lip to refrain from howling with derisive laughter. "_Sub_-persona non grata. Understood. But that definitely bans you from your own party, then. Doesn't it?" she inquired, furrowing her eyebrows in false contemplation.

The livid girl's jaw tensed, but she didn't address the insult. "Why are you in my _house_?" she repeated scornfully.

"Yikes, you really don't like me…Oh, unclench, Martin. Allison invited me. Which is baffling because I personally think she's way too pleasant – and _sane_ – to be wasting her time with you."

"Funny, I was going to say the same about _you_, Durant. Or is it Kosta today? I never know which one to use. In all fairness, it kind of seems like you just switch when you get bored," Lydia bit back with a contemptuous smile. She continued scathingly, "_Sweetheart_, you might consider sticking exclusively with Kosta. Since it's virtually a cast-iron guarantee that your current freakishness is going to evolve into a full-blown and certifiable psychosis any day now...If it hasn't already."

Mal grinned, boiling on the inside but loath to gratify her archenemy. "Wow, that has to be the wittiest thing you've ever said to me…or anyone at all. Props to you. I mean as usual, you have no idea what you're talking about. But interesting choice of words, _honey_," she sneered pointedly, smothering the foul emotions brought up by the subject Lydia had broached.

The mean girl was on the verge of retaliating when Mal vanished into the crowd around them, successfully cutting Lydia off. With any luck, a sixteen-year-old werewolf would be the only horror she'd have to contend with for the rest of the night.

Stiles was nowhere to be seen on the patio, but she heaved a sigh of relief when she spotted Scott and Allison chatting by a pillar near the door.

"Oh, thank God!" she cried, thrilled that she'd successfully escaped Lydia and that her best friend was still human.

"Hey, you came!" Allison hailed her cheerfully, her fingers laced into Scott's.

"Not my kind of music," Mal commented as the DJ played an electropop track. "But how could I resist the lively entertainment?" she added, gesturing with her chin at a lacrosse player she knew only as "Greenberg", who'd just belly-flopped into the pool with a sickening whump.

Scott and his date chuckled, albeit on opposite ends of the comfort spectrum.

It was weird for him, the most constant girl in his life and the newest one talking to each other so easily. He'd seen them on the bleachers that day but suddenly realized he'd never actually introduced the two of them. "Hang on. When did you guys meet?" he asked, pointing between them.

"Mallory lent me a hand with something last period," Allison answered radiantly.

"Yes, Scott. Contrary to popular belief, I _can _be sociable with other people," Mal confirmed wryly when he blinked in confusion.

Scott rolled his eyes. " 'Mallory'?" he aped in amusement. He rarely ever called her that.

"Oh yeah!" she cut in to clarify. "Allison, it's totally fine if you wanna call me 'Mal'. Scott and Stiles do, anyway."

At the mention of his other companion, Scott's face visibly blanched. "Is he – is Stiles here?"

Doing her best to communicate that he was already forgiven, Mal aimed a deliberate and meaningful stare at him. "Yeah. I'm not sure where he disappeared to, but don't worry, he's – enjoying himself," she explained, and Scott seemed to understand what she meant because he was beaming brightly.

"Good, I'm glad."

The trio exchanged friendly conversation after that. About Allison's move to Beacon Hills and about school – though Mal was careful not to dwell on the topic of lacrosse. Allison even shared a story about her dad's gun collection, keeping it light so as not to frighten Scott, whose grimace was not lost on the two girls.

Mal had the question, "So, Allison, favorite band?", on the tip of her tongue when the song changed and she no longer needed it. More to the point, she'd briefly lost her ability to form coherent thoughts. This song was her nirvana.

Played on a violin, hurdy-gurdy, and mandolin, the melody gradually built, prompting Mal and Allison to squeal in elated unison, "Oh my God! This is my –", stopping purely to grin at each other while Scott peered between them in slightly disoriented happiness.

"No way! You, too?" Mal asked incredulously, gaping with newfound veneration at the other girl, who spiritedly and instinctively bobbed her head.

"Absolutely. They're, like, the quintessential indie band. I adore them!" Allison gushed, swaying to the first of the drumbeats.

Mal flourished her hands at Allison in fervent accord. "Yes! You get it! Okay, we are – we are _so _having an in-depth discussion about this later, but right now, I – I've gotta find Stiles!" she announced, flustered and on the tips of her toes as she struggled to spot him.

Before the other two could say anything, she dashed through the throng of dancing teenagers so as not to miss out on too much of the song. Her hunch was that Stiles had requested it, and she searched for him excitedly, catching sight of his buzz-cut a few seconds later.

He was swiveling in his spot in the middle of the backyard-turned-dance-floor and hollering her name over and over again at the tops of his lungs. She gesticulated wildly, and when he met her eager green eyes, he literally bowled people over in his hurry to reach her.

Stiles grabbed her hand without delay and spun her around under his arm as the bass dropped and the music intensified. Several people had to move out of their way, and the pair roared with laughter until Win Butler began singing again.

_There's a weight that's pressing down  
>Late at night you can hear the sound<br>Even the noise you make when you sleep  
>Can't swim across a river so deep<em>

They didn't talk, just stayed close to each other and danced to the rhythm that was virtually impossible not to enjoy. Not only for Mal and Stiles – or Allison and Scott, who were giggling and dancing uninhibitedly – but also for the majority of the other partygoers, who were at the very least tapping their feet on the ground.

Mal and Stiles mouthed the lyrics while he moved with stunning grace (stunning for him, anyway.) He didn't flail his arms or legs but bounced to the upbeat-sounding chorus, his body occasionally undulating marvelously. That's what Mal thought, in any case, pausing to appreciate it once Stiles had shut his eyes.

_There's this fear I keep so deep  
>Knew its name since before I could speak, yeah<br>Aaaaah Aaaaah Aaaaah Aaaaah_

Stiles's eyelids flickered open when Mal sang along audibly and kicked her legs out, apparently having switched typical dance techniques with her best friend. He beamed at her warmly, his gaze affixed to her. (Which was amazing since Lydia was making out with Jackson in the corner no further than two yards from them.)

Stiles luxuriated in the ambiance provided by the melody and Mal's pirouetting and the twinkling lights hanging overhead. This was also his nirvana.

_If some night I don't come home  
>Please don't think I've left you alone<em>

Mal twirled some more, her hands in the air while her skirt fanned out around her. She even took Stiles's hand to spin _him_ a couple of times, stretching while he awkwardly bent down to comically execute the dance move.

All concerns about werewolves and cruel teenage girls lay forgotten on the ground.

The tune was vastly lighter than the lyrics, but this was Mal's go-to song when she was upset. Theo had once asked her why, but she couldn't say. It simply was.

She jumped alongside Stiles and a large number of the other kids dancing until the final beats were banged out on the drums and the music eventually cut out.

Stiles turned to Mal with the widest and goofiest smile on his face. The only word that came to her mind to describe it was 'exhilarated'.

"Does this lessen the torture of being here?" Mal was heaving with breath, so he answered himself, "I'll take your muteness as a 'Yes'."

Leading them to a cooler of Cokes on the ground and then pitching him one, she asked, "Did you do that?"

"Possibly." He shrugged innocently, goofy grin still in place.

Mal shook her head, stunned. After all these years, Stiles's sensitivity still somehow managed to surprise her. Not many people understood her the way he clearly did.

She was speechless only for a moment, swiftly recovering to express her gratitude. "You – I'm glad you exist."

Stiles briefly looked like he didn't know what to say to that, but then he smirked with evident self-satisfaction. "Well, I couldn't have you stabbing pins in your eyes, because my dad would definitely team up with your mom to kill me and then temporarily bring me back just to get some yelling in. I guess I figured Arcade Fire would be an effective preemptive strike against all of that…"

"Oh, effective, for sure," she agreed, chuckling as Stiles gulped down his soda and belched obnoxiously enough to rival Buddy the Elf.

"Then it was totally worth the five bucks I had to bribe the DJ with."

* * *

><p>Mal's euphoria didn't last long, however. Half an hour later, she wanted to smack herself – and quite frankly, Stiles.<p>

She'd been leaning against Lydia's kitchen wall, chatting idly with Harley and some of the other girls on the cross-country team, when he hurtled into the room and nearly crashed into her.

"We gotta go. Like _now_," he muttered, sternly tugging her away from the group while Harley watched them curiously.

"It's really happening? Where did he go? Should we follow him? Is Allison safe? What are we going to tell Harley?" Mal thrust her questions at him, his eyes widening as he attempted to distinguish one from another and usher her to the Jeep at the same time.

Essentially diving into his seat, he shrieked, "God, I don't know! What are you even saying?!"

Mal picked the most manageable problem first. "Allison. Is she okay?"

"Wha – yeah, she's fine. I guess Scott fled before he could – rip into her," he supplied with a grimace. "I…saw her get a ride home."

"From who?" Mal questioned tensely, picking up on his hesitance and letting her hand hover over the door handle as she spoke to him through the open passenger side window.

Stiles nervously peeked at her. "Um, you may not like this..."

"I hate it when you start sentences that way," she grumbled, huffing in annoyance.

"Derek Hale," he burst out, before rolling his lips into his mouth and staring fixedly out of the windshield.

"Please tell me you know a multitude of 'Derek Hales', and at least one of them isn't a potential _murder suspect_?" Mal anxiously pleaded, her nails digging into her left palm.

"I know a multitude of 'Derek Hales' and at least one of them isn't a potential murder suspect," Stiles parroted flippantly, but he was also beginning to feel kind of guilty for letting Allison leave with Derek. Even if he wasn't a murderer, he was still a significantly older man and a total stranger to Allison, which begged the question: how _had _he convinced her to go with him?

Mal pinched the bridge of her nose and had to think on her feet. Hastily, she said, "Okay, genius. This is what we're gonna do. You go after Scott, check that he hasn't – torn anyone into shreds, and I'll get ahold of Allison and make sure she's all right."

She thumped on the Jeep to light a fire under Stiles, but he caught her hand. "Whoa, wait! How are you gonna do that? _You_ don't have a car! – And you don't know where she lives!" he rightfully noted.

"But Harley does. They're neighbors, remember? I'll figure out an excuse, just go!" she commanded, and he started the car quickly. "Call me when you can – and for the love of God, _please_ don't do anything reckless!"

"Same goes for you!" he countered shrilly and with a significant look.

As the Jeep streaked down the road, Mal sprinted across the street to find Harley, berating herself for having been too apathetic to get her license.

She reeled back at the sight of her sable-haired friend waiting impatiently by Lydia's front door. Understandably, Harley had noticed the abnormal level of weird with her and Stiles.

"What the hell is going on? Where's Scott? New Girl said he just bolted?" she interrogated with more than a hint of disappointment.

"He – wasn't feeling well? He's, um, throwing up right now. Violently," Mal lied, flinching imperceptibly at her crassness. She hadn't seen Scott leave but assumed it'd been without an acceptable reason. "Listen, I'm really sorry to have to ask you a favor like this – I know you're having fun and everything – but could you give me a ride to Allison's? She – Scott feels awful about ditching her, and he wanted me to apologize for him."

But this was evidently the wrong approach, because Harley angrily objected, "If Scott's gonna bail on a girl half-way through their date and ask _you_ to apologize for him, he doesn't deserve to be forgiven. That's a dick move!"

Mal all but stamped her foot before forcing herself to take a deep breath. "Harley. You know he's a good guy. This was supposed to be an awesome first date for him and Allison, but it turned to crap because he got sick, okay? Could you please just help _me_ help him out? If this simmers too long, she'll hate him."

"Why can't Stiles drive you?" Harley asked defiantly. "Where'd _he_ go?"

"After Scott. To make sure he didn't crash Mrs. McCall's car into a mailbox or something," Mal lied again, more fluidly than before. She was both bothered by and moderately proud of her ability to do so.

Harley shrugged her hoodie on in answer and dug her keys out from inside her purse. "You guys _so_ owe me one," she mumbled, tramping to her Ford Escape.

Mal scurried after her, extolling Harley's generosity. "You are beautiful and wonderful! And Scott will love you forev –"

"Yeah, yeah. Save it for Allison." The ensuing silence was uncomfortable but short-lived, and after a minute, she inquired, "So has Stilinski been taking dance lessons or...?"

A boorish snort escaped Mal, effectively cutting any lasting tension. "Kinda seems like the only explanation, doesn't it?"

"He didn't break out a single one of his typical White Dad moves," Harley teased, although utterly amazed.

"Win Butler invariably has that effect," Mal declared as Harley pulled into the Argent's driveway.

"Look, Scott should _really_ be the one doing this, but I know you care too much about him to give a shit. So, good luck – or something to that effect," she offered, as close to encouraging as she'd be on the matter. Even though all Mal actually intended to do was confirm that Allison was still intact and not, for example, having pieces of her body scattered all over the woods.

In fact, she heartily agreed with Harley: Allison deserved an apology directly from Scott. Once the looming threat of bloodshed was behind all of them, which reminded her…

"Hey, could you do me one more favor?" At her friend's waspish frown, Mal babbled incoherently, "Don'tgobacktothepartygostraighthomeandlockyourdoors."

"What? Mal, you have to _pause_ between words," Harley patronized with a mocking smile.

"Right. Um – just stay safe, okay? That woman was cut in half, and if her killer's of the serial persuasion, then…just please go home tonight," Mal pleaded.

"Sure, will do," Harley promised with a changed demeanor. "Do you want me to wait for you?"

"No, I'll call Stiles."

Mal mostly declined because she didn't want Harley to remain out in the open and vulnerable – to either a murderer or potentially-blood-lusting-werewolf Scott. But she also wasn't certain where Allison was, and Mal didn't have even the roughest idea for an adequate explanation of the possibility that she hadn't come home. It was simply best that Harley never know the truth.

And so, mercifully unaware of the horror brewing in the town of Beacon Hills, Harley bid her companion farewell.

* * *

><p>Mal paced on the new girl's front porch for what felt like hours but was actually less than three minutes, debating between ringing the Argent's doorbell – with the understanding that they'd probably panic if some random girl came asking for Allison and she wasn't there – and waiting outside until she hopefully showed up.<p>

Mal wanted to believe Derek wouldn't hurt an innocent girl by the logic that her brother, who was typically a fantastic judge of character, _had_ been friends with him in high school. But this was more for her peace of mind than anything else, since she didn't know the first thing about twenty-four-year-old Derek Hale. He might've gone insane and turned into a callous butcher after his family was destroyed. More than anyone else, Mal knew this was plausible.

Plus, if Derek was in fact being questioned for murdering the girl in the woods, what were the chances that the Sheriff was mistaken? He was a seasoned policeman and had closed several cases like this before; his time with the department only strengthened his expertise. And now Mal's restlessness.

Just as she was about to hammer on the door, the sound of car wheels gliding over asphalt reached her ears. She swiveled around, her hand dropping by her side as she squinted at the approaching jet-black Camaro. Scrambling to the car, she rapped sharply on the driver's window five times before it rolled down to reveal a relatively disgruntled young man.

"Can I help you with something?" Derek uttered with unnerving calm, despite the fact that this intrusive girl was bothering him for a second time.

Mal's worries were assuaged at the sight of the tall brunette hopping out of the passenger's side, not a hair out of place or a scratch on her flawless skin. She waved, just about squeaking with relief.

Projecting some of her discontentment with Scott onto his best friend, Allison acknowledged Mal curtly. "Oh. Mallory. What are you doing here?"

"Making sure you got home okay after Scott had to rush off like that," she asserted, her reason finally genuine.

"Yeah, well you know Derek, right? He offered me a ride," Allison stated, wrongly inferring that since he claimed to be Scott's friend, he was also Mal's.

Mal had no idea what Allison was talking about but hummed noncommittally anyway, not wanting to alarm her. "How _generous_ of him," she complimented insincerely, a saccharine smile plastered on her face as she speculated about Derek's dubious intentions.

He picked up on her veiled hostility but kept up the polite charade. "It was no problem. _Really_," he ardently pledged, although Mal hadn't the slightest clue what he meant or whether it was somehow a threat in disguise.

"Could you give us a minute?" she addressed Allison, leveling a muted glare at Derek. When the girl furrowed her brow and didn't move, she elaborated, "I haven't seen him in awhile."

Allison walked to her porch and shuffled on its steps, averting her gaze, as it seemed that Mal desired privacy – for whatever reason.

Mal sunk to the shady stranger's eye level and dug her fingertips into her thighs. "Why?" she confronted Derek in a low tone, unafraid only because Allison was so close. _He wouldn't pull anything now, right?_

"Like you said. I'm _generous_," he mimicked, uninterested but also brazenly staring Mal dead in the eye.

She swallowed heavily, his glinting grey irises almost causing her to completely lose her cool. "Look, I don't know what you're after or if you were the one who…killed that woman in the woods. But whatever your issue is, leave _her_ out of it," she ordered, her heart palpitating as she darted a glance at Allison. The warning was feeble, with nothing to back it up, but she deemed the steadiness of her voice a sufficient victory.

Derek quirked an eyebrow inquisitively and concealed a smirk. He'd heard her erratic pulse, but it seemed that the foolish girl had no qualms about trying to intimidate him, a guy she'd hardly ever spoken to and who obviously terrified her. "Her date stranded her at a party overrun by drunk and stupid teenagers. I did them both a_ favor_," he murmured disdainfully, outwardly brushing off the allegations she'd made.

A second later, the growl of a brand-new werewolf captured his attention, a noise only Derek could detect this far away. He revved up the Camaro's engine and abruptly drove off, foiling any and all attempts Mal would've made to legitimately threaten a grown man.

She would've been incensed were it not for an unsuspecting Allison waiting patiently in the cold. Ignoring the buzzing in her coat pocket, Mal breezed over to the porch. "Sorry about that, I wanted to…ask him something," she said vaguely.

"Sure. Catching up, I get it," Allison responded politely, internally wondering whether Scott's best friend would grant her a straightforward answer to the question that had been plaguing her for the past twenty minutes. Deciding Mal most likely wouldn't, she tried to dismiss her. "Well, I got home okay, so if that's all you needed…"

"Oh. Yeah – I mean – It is all I needed but…" Mal stumbled over her words and laughed at herself before starting over. "Look, I'm not gonna apologize for Scott. He could've done a lot of things differently tonight, but that's between you and him. I just want you to know I was telling you the truth before. He _is_ a considerate guy, albeit a little scatterbrained sometimes. He'd never purposely upset anyone, especially you." Allison permitted the smallest of smiles, so Mal jovially continued, "And that's all I'm going to say about him, because I'd much rather talk about –"

"The quintessential indie band?" Allison finished affably.

"And how freaking brilliant it is that you love them as much as I do!" Mal praised, but before she could say anything else, her phone vibrated again.

She promptly remembered that Stiles was on werewolf guard duty and that she was supposed to be awaiting his call, so she snatched the phone out of her coat pocket, holding a 'Sorry, gotta answer this' finger up at Allison. She turned around and pressed the device to her ear with a hushed but anxious, "What's going on?! How's Scott?"

"_When a person is trying to get in touch with you, the customary thing to do is to let them, Mal!_" Stiles hollered irately. "_I swear to God, if you were screening my calls –_"

" – No! No, I wasn't!" she winced, scolding herself for getting sidetracked. "Sorry, sorry, I'm here. What's happening?"

"_What's happening is shit hitting the fan. Scott's gone, most likely ingesting someone's pancreas right now. He totally flipped out for no good –_" Stiles ceased his ranting, clearly reconsidering what he was about to say."_Tell me you found Allison_," he requested shortly.

Mal lowered her voice even further, so as not to alert the girl in question. "Yeah. Yes. We're outside her house. She's totally fine, Derek drove her. Except – and I have no idea why – I think he told her Scott was his friend because she acted like I was, too." Stiles's consequential silence wasn't helpful at all. "Oh god, what is it?"

"_Where is he? Is he still there?!_" Stiles cried sharply, and Mal identified tires squealing in the background.

"No, he's gone…Hold on. Why do _you_ have a problem with him all of a sudden?" she demanded edgily.

"_I don't know what he wanted with Allison, but Derek Hale's the one who bit Scott,_" Stiles grimly divulged."_He's _also_ a werewolf, and he murdered the girl from the woods._"

"What?!" Mal squawked, attracting Allison's attention.

"Is everything all right?" she inquired concernedly.

"_Ahhh, lie! Lie!_" Stiles urged, amid the racket of his car's horn honking at whoever was blocking his path.

"Uh, yeah. It's Stiles. He...lost his keys so he had to hotwire his car," Mal adlibbed. Brilliantly, according to the boy on the other end of the line.

"_Hell yeah, I did!_" he cheered, temporarily forgetting about Scott and Derek.

Mal pictured him pumping his fist in the air proudly, regardless of the reality that he barely knew the anatomy of a car engine, let alone how to control one with its wires.

"Whoa, that's totally awesome!" Allison proclaimed with an impish but surprised grin. Her first impression had been that Stiles, however likeable, was kind of a dork.

"Sure, except the doofus found the keys on his dash five seconds later." Mal reckoned that sounded more realistic. "You're picking me up, right?" she said to Stiles, who was protesting under his breath vehemently.

"_I dunno_. _If I'm such a _doofus_, you probably shouldn't get into a car with me,_" he objected indignantly, confirming soon after, "_Yeah, I'm on the corner of Willow and Castle._"

"Good." Muffling her voice again, she promised him, "We're gonna find Scott. We'll stay out all night if we have to."

And they did.

* * *

><p>When Stiles and Mal found him the next morning, Scott was limping along the road several miles from his house, half-naked and cradling his arm. His jeans, the same ones from the previous day, were stained and appeared to be damp.<p>

_What the hell did he do?_ Mal pondered, bemused.

"Oi! Wolf Man!" she called to him through the window of the Jeep.

Freezing and grateful, Scott clambered into the car and took Stiles's proffered jacket before describing to his companions the chaos of his night, eyelids fluttering in exhaustion.

After he'd jumped out of his room, Scott had chased after Derek, wrestled with the other werewolf, and run from a gang of werewolf-shooting hunters (the moment Derek had pulled the incapacitating arrow out of his arm).

"Right. Because you morphing into a beast straight out of Greek mythology _wasn't_ already enough," Mal moaned, flinging her head back after Scott showed her and Stiles the rapidly fading wound.

"You know what actually worries me the most?" he continued, slumping back in his seat dejectedly.

Running on zero hours of sleep, Stiles snippily responded, "If you say Allison, I'm gonna punch you in the head."

"Yeah, the answer better be that you're presently a creature of the night," Mal chimed in, also tremendously sleep-deprived. She'd been working Stiles's radio all night, switching through most of its channels to find music that wouldn't spare either one of them a wink of sleep.

Scott paid no heed to their comments. "She probably hates me now."

"Ugh," Stiles scoffed. "I doubt that. Mal got to her in time."

Scott swung around to face her, appreciably more awake. "What did you say to her? What did she say to you?! Is she really pissed?"

Mal shook her head, exhausted and refusing to play the go-between. "Nope, no, leave me out of this. Like I told her, it's between you guys."

Scott pouted sullenly.

"Dude, she'll give you another shot. Mal's good at the whole 'talking to people' thing…But you might want to come up with a pretty amazing apology," Stiles advised, but then he appeared to be rethinking something. "Or, you know, you could just – tell her the truth and – revel in the awesomeness of the fact that you're a frickin' werewolf."

Scott narrowed his eyes.

"Okay, bad idea."

"I still can't believe it," Mal said blankly, her lack of rest having shrouded everything in a paradoxically dreamlike haze.

"Hey, we'll get through this," Stiles declared faithfully. He added to Scott, "Come on, if Mal and I have to, we'll chain you up ourselves on full moon nights and feed you live mice. I had a boa once. I could do it."

Mal guffawed in spite of her apprehension and rested a bracing hand on Scott's shoulder. "Basically, we've got your back, bro," she affirmed, shaking him supportively.

Scott turned to look at his two favorite people in the world, thinking that maybe everything _would_ turn out okay.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Would I be a douche for saying this is my favorite chapter so far? I've kind of been picturing the scene with the Arcade Fire song for a month now and I feel like it turned out okay, but I wanna know what you think! I really appreciate the reviews I've gotten thus far (SHOUT OUT to hello (?), BrandiMcallMikelson and Lmv16. You three lit a fire under my ass, so thank you!) I would love to hear more from any readers out there. How do you feel about Mal and the way the canon characters have been portrayed? That type of thing is really important to me when I write, so any feedback would be phenomenal. Thanks beauties! You all make me as happy as Arcade Fire makes Mallory.**


	6. Chapter 5

The author's note at the end of the chapter has some important info about story links and future updates. Do read it if you can, darlings. Also, reviews are welcomed and encouraged. *Wink, wink.*

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5<strong>

_And we're forever unfulfilled  
>Can't think why<br>Like a search for murder clues  
>In dead man's eyes<em>

"_Okay, so, you know that friend I told you I was gonna visit? He turned out to be _kind of_ an asshole,_" Theo reported to Mal over the phone the following Monday, skipping over any and all pleasantries to complain to his sister.

"Where the hell have you been all weekend?!" she nearly shrieked, wishing her brother was with her in the high school, so she could throttle him. "I left you about twenty voicemails!"

"_Whoa, dude. Chill. I was with Mom. She's been working since Friday – all alone – and I felt bad. Apparently, the assholes run rampant in Beacon County, and a lot of them are lawyers_," he defended, having forgotten his mother's intense work schedule after being away from home for so long.

"Don't tell me to chill, I hate it when guys do that to girls!" Mal screeched, stomping down the relatively empty corridor. "Look, that _friend_ of yours is – being interrogated for chopping a girl in half. Were you at all aware of that?" she questioned shrilly, interrupting herself to lie to yet another person she cared about.

"_Mal, did the Sheriff tell you Derek's guilty? Because if it didn't come straight from him, you might be making an outrageous accusation...I know Derek,_" Theo debated, exhaling impatiently. He'd heard rumors about his old friend being a suspect but had chosen not to pay them any attention.

Mal bit the inside of her cheek, afflicted by the secrets she had to keep from her brother. As somewhat of a last resort, she aptly pointed out, "Correction. You _used to_ know Derek."

"_Yeah, okay. So what? He might be rude and ornery now, but that doesn't exactly make him a killer_," Theo rationalized, and if it were possible to hear someone rolling his eyes, Mal would distinctly have heard her brother.

"When did you see him? What did he say to you?" she probed, keeping her tone as believably indifferent as possible as she headed toward the boy's locker room.

When she'd arrived at Scott and Stiles's afternoon lacrosse practice fifteen minutes late and they weren't there, Coach Finstock had irritably informed her that Scott was handling first line worse than his dead grandmother would have and that after he'd effectively disabled Jackson by smashing into him, he and "his twitchy little friend" had run off the field.

"_I saw Derek at the hardware store near mom's office this morning_," Theo conveyed to her with an audible grunt."_I was picking up some light bulbs for the house, and when I said hi, he didn't even remember me. I was perfectly pleasant, but the only greeting I got from him was an alarmingly aggressive, 'Do I know you?' Not even the standard apology for totally forgetting a person's existence…Y'know, he was always arrogant in high school but never hostile."_

Mal let out a silent breath, relieved that Derek had been impolite. At least he seemed to be leaving her brother out of things. "Theo, you and I both know some people change for the worse. That's how the world works."

"_Oh god, Mal. Please don't turn this into a diatribe against Dad_," he groaned before yawning. "_I haven't had nearly enough sleep for your well-established brand of condescension._"

"I'm only looking out for you," she huffed indignantly. "We haven't always trusted the right people, and now you have two cases in point, so do me a favor, all right? Stay away from Derek. At least until the police determine who killed that girl," she begged, urgency coloring her voice.

"_You're more of a mom than Mom is sometimes. You know that, right?_" he teased facetiously, clearly not appreciating the gravity of the situation.

"Theo, I'm serious. Derek's – he's a bad guy, okay? And it's not some baseless allegation. He literally lied to a girl to get her into a car with him," she divulged, walking down the stairs to the school's basement. "He's a creep."

"_What? No, he didn't. That's – that's ridiculous._"

"Quit defending him!" she paused to shout in the seclusion of the stairwell, clenching her jaw. "I went to a party Friday night, and Scott was on a date with this girl he likes, but he…was coming down with something, so he had to bolt. And then Derek ambushed her and explicitly said he was our friend, which would already have been disturbing enough without him being a murder suspect. I had to wait at her house to make sure she was coming back."

There was a strained silence on Theo's end. For a second, Mal thought he might've hung up the phone, but before too long, he murmured in surrender, "_Okay, have it your way. I won't talk to him anymore."_

"It's not _my_ way. It's just good sense, Theo. And I –" Mal broke off upon rounding the corner, having been immediately confronted with a bizarre - and honestly, rather frightening – sight.

Still decked out in his lacrosse gear, Stiles was hugging a fire extinguisher with a wild expression on his face, a faint sheen of sweat above his upper lip. He didn't notice Mal, peeking over his shoulder into the locker room as he was and then ducking inside to deal with whatever he'd been hiding from.

" – I gotta go. I'll see you at home," Mal said hastily, hanging up the phone before Theo could get a word in and sprinting to the doorway of the open boys' locker room.

Stiles had cast the extinguisher aside and torn his lacrosse gloves off, a weary look replacing his previously terrified one. Scott was slumped on a bench and drenched in sweat, his fingers buried in his damp hair.

Gripping the doorframe with one hand and the back of Stiles's jersey with the other, Mal yelled, "What the hell is going on?! Are you guys okay?"

Stiles looked back at her and caught her arm, giving it a calming squeeze. "We're fine…now. He started turning during practice, but I hauled him out of there before he could seriously maim Jackson – and then sprayed him with the fire extinguisher before he could kill me," he announced, staring meaningfully at the werewolf.

"You wolfed out on the field?! Did anyone see you? " Mal exclaimed, leaning around Stiles to frown at Scott. "Oh god, did Jackson?"

"No, of course not! He's clueless as always," Stiles answered comfortingly. Mal's shoulders sank in relief as he crouched down beside his other best friend. "But Scott, listen to me, it's like I told you before. It's the anger. It's your pulse rising. It's a trigger."

"But that's lacrosse. It's a pretty violent game, if you hadn't noticed," Scott argued, glancing distressfully between Mal and Stiles.

"Well, it's gonna be a lot more violent if you end up killing someone on the field," Stiles retorted.

"This can't happen again," Mal interjected, kneeling next to Stiles while he nodded fervently. "If someone had seen you…Look, I know it's the first game of the season, but –"

" – You can't play Saturday. You're gonna have to get out of the game," Stiles cut in.

"But I'm first line," Scott mumbled dismally.

"Not anymore."

* * *

><p>At around 9'oclock that night, Mal was studying for a Spanish quiz and listening to <em>Gorillaz <em>when she received a text from Scott. _Get on Skype. Stiles has an update on Jackson_.

Their friend had told her how Scott almost had a panic attack about Allison's dad, who was apparently the chief werewolf hunter from the night of the full moon. Unnerved by the hunters and fed up with Jackson's attempts at making him look like an idiot, Scott had slammed into the captain of the lacrosse team and injured his shoulder. "Under any other circumstances, it would've been incredibly satisfying," Stiles had snickered.

Mal turned her music down but not all the way off, signed into her Skype account, and waited for Stiles to set up a three-way call. Which he did in the most Stiles-esque manner, shooting a light-up Nerf gun at his computer screen with a gigantic grin.

"Ahhh right in the eye!" she cried, covering her face with her hands and then peeking through her fingers at him.

Stiles beamed at her appreciatively, and she smirked.

Scott rolled his eyes at them, thoroughly exhausted. "What'd you find out?"

"Well, it's bad. Jackson's got a separated shoulder," Stiles informed his companions, putting the toy down.

"Because of me?" Scott inquired, almost sounding contrite.

"Because he's a tool," Stiles countered.

"Yeah, serves him right for trying to get you benched," Mal joined in with a scowl. "He's actually kinda had it coming for years."

Scott ignored her and furrowed his eyebrows. "But is he gonna play?"

"Well, they don't know yet. Now they're just counting on you for Saturday," Stiles said.

Annoyed and genuinely believing he was never going to catch a break, Scott shut his eyes and rolled his head forward. Sure, Allison had forgiven him, and that was wonderful. But on top of her werewolf-slaying father, he now had to face up to the fact that he'd hurt someone and most likely wouldn't be able to play lacrosse anymore without a repeat of that afternoon.

Before Scott could express how truly miserable he was, Stiles leaned in toward his webcam, peering mysteriously at something.

Mal and Scott copied him, wondering what had diverted his focus. "What?" they asked simultaneously.

Stiles's eyes widened with terror, and he began typing on his keyboard, evidently to be discreet. The words '_It looks like'_ popped up on the screen, followed by the maddening rainbow wheel symptomatic of a slow internet connection.

Mal smacked her frozen computer and cursed, but she eventually distinguished the silhouette of a man lurking ominously in Scott's doorway.

She stiffened as Scott questioned, "It looks like what?"

"Behind you," Mal whispered, moving her lips as little as possible.

"Huh?" Scott uttered stupidly, right as the irritating wheel disappeared and '_Someone's behind you_' came up on the monitor.

The shadowed man suddenly grabbed Scott and their end went black, leaving Stiles and Mal to stare at each other in horror.

"Where'd he go?! Was that _Derek_?" Mal shrieked, futilely clicking around her screen to find Scott and then leaping up out of her desk chair when nothing worked.

"Oh God. Oh no. Shit!" Stile swore, whimpering slightly while he shook his monitor in vain. "Crap, what do we do? What do we do?!"

"I don't know! What _can_ we do?" Mal snapped back before remembering Scott's mom didn't have the night shift at the hospital. "Actually, what can _Derek_ do? He wouldn't assault Scott while Mrs. McCall's in the house, right?"

"That looked pretty assaultive to me, Mal!" Stiles snarled, gesticulating frantically.

Mal closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, pinching the bridge of her nose to concentrate. "Okay. Let's…wait five minutes. If he doesn't call, we'll – we'll tell your dad," she pledged, sitting down with wooden posture.

Those five minutes were the longest of their lives. Mal could tell by the way Stiles was moving that he was nervously jiggling his foot. His eyes flashed around his room, refusing to settle on any one thing for too long. Mal didn't point any of this out; she knew it was how he dealt best with scary situations. And anyway, she'd be a hypocrite for doing so since she was biting her nails down to their stubs.

When she was onto her fourth fingernail, her cell phone buzzed. She whisked it off of the desk, hollering, "What happened?!", into the microphone.

Stiles swiveled in his chair, eagerly awaiting news, so Mal put Scott on speakerphone.

"Derek Hale threw me at my own wall and barked death threats at me. Said he'd kill me if I try to play on Saturday," the hapless boy grumbled through gritted teeth. "What am I supposed to do? The team's depending on me."

"Scott, I've said this before, and I know I'll have to say it again, but your life is more important," Mal stated resolutely.

Stiles bobbed his head approvingly, but since Scott couldn't see him, he added, "Tell Coach tomorrow. You'll probably have to put him at the top of the list of lunatics that wanna murder you, but better him than that hairy werewolf_ psycho_."

Mal rolled her eyes while Scott emitted a low groan and fell back on his bed. "It was Jackson this time, and given that you didn't kill him, I'm not too concerned," she said dismissively, and Stiles snorted. "But what if it'd been Stiles? What if you wolf out again, and he gets hurt?"

"I didn't do that on purpose, Mal!" Scott asserted angrily, referring to what had occurred earlier in the locker room.

"Scott, I know. I know you couldn't control it then, I'm not blaming you," she assured him. "Still, even Jackson deserves to live. If not playing lacrosse can protect people – Stiles, Allison, anyone really – it's worth it."

Scott sighed glumly. _So much for a fresh start._

* * *

><p>"So I'm pretty sure Coach thinks I'm gay. And his brother did meth for a while, apparently. But it's all good, he has veneers now," Scott began right before third period, leaning against the wall next to Mal with his arms folded while she crammed an armful of books and a paper bag lunch into her locker. Grouchily, he continued, "Oh, and I'm off first line if I don't play the game."<p>

Mal squinted at him around her locker door as an orange and three of her textbooks tumbled noisily onto the floor. "Whoa, okay. That is a _lot_ of information," she remarked, picking her things up and once again stuffing them into her locker.

"I was just in his office. I told him – _several _times – that I can't play tomorrow night, that I'm having personal issues. And he started rambling about drugs and homosexuality," Scott clarified as Mal slammed her door shut and hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders. "Basically, he's gonna bench me. Again."

Mal's head lolled back. "Man, you never catch a break, do you?" she mumbled. "I figured he'd sideline you for a game or two, not the whole freakin' season!"

"Yup, well…damned if I do, _really_ damned if I don't, I guess," Scott griped.

Mal kept silent for a moment but then poked his arm. "Hey, we'll work it out. Between you, me, and Stiles, I'm sure each of our two-thirds of a brain can come up with some sort of viable solution," she promised with a wink.

"If you say so," Scott snorted, glimpsing her sly smile from the corner of his eye and then abruptly remembering something he'd forgotten to do. Faintly smirking, he added, "Oh, yeah. I never thanked you for talking to Allison last Friday. She said you spoke very _highly_ of me, and it's part of the reason she wants to give me a second chance."

Mal quirked an eyebrow wickedly. "Huh, that's weird. Because I distinctly warned her to steer clear of the colossal idiot who showed up at my birthday party in his underwear two years ago," she mocked.

Positively alarmed, Scott sprang off the wall. "You didn't. Please tell me you didn't. You were the one who wanted to have a party at 8 am on a Saturday! I'd barely even woken up!"

After letting him fret for a few seconds and sniggering at his obvious discomfort, Mal answered, "Have I ever struck you as the sort of person who'd humiliate you like that? Besides, you just said she _wants_ to give you a second chance."

Scott offered her a vacant stare, unamusedly picking food from his teeth. Mal tousled his mop of hair as she always did when he wouldn't banter with her, and he swatted her hand away, leading them toward the Math and Science wing where both of their next classes were.

"Ugh, you make it _so _hard to say 'Thank you'," he whined. "But whatever, I owe you big-time."

"Nah, that one was on the house," Mal said with a grin. "Although I wouldn't object if you opted to name one of your stunning, tan, curly-haired babies after me. 'Mallory McCall' has a certain appeal to it, _I _think."

" 'Mallory McCall'?" Allison called to them merrily as she descended a nearby flight of stairs. She was dressed in a pair of skinny jeans and a long and very flattering tank top, looking gorgeous as ever, according to the other two teenagers. "Are you two getting married?" she teased.

Naturally, Mal and Scott guffawed.

"That'd be, like, incestuous," he replied, once his laughter had subsided. The very idea was ludicrous.

"Ooh, good word," Mal praised, nudging him admiringly. She explained to Allison, "I was just telling him it'd be super cool if he named one of his kids after me."

Allison squinted at her curiously, but before Scott could step in to prevent what would've been a very weird discussion between the two girls, his phone went off. He anxiously skimmed over the message from his mom notifying him she'd be at the game.

"Anything wrong?" Allison asked kindly.

Scott didn't want to lose his cool with the beautiful brunette standing right in front of him. The way she gazed at him was electrifying, and Mal might as well have been a fly.

"No, no. It's just, uh, my mom. She's nothing," he said in somewhat of a trance. When Allison knit her eyebrows, Scott realized how the statement had come across and backpedaled. "I mean it's nothing. Uh, nothing's wrong when you're around."

Mal averted her eyes and cringed; Scott's charm bordered on nauseating sometimes.

Allison beamed at him, however, clearly finding it adorable. "I like the sound of that," she laughed.

"Don't we all?" Mal interrupted awkwardly, wanting to leave and having decided it would be socially unacceptable for her to try subtly backing away from the conversation she knew she was intruding on. "Unfortunately, I've gotta get to Psych – "

"Oh, I have to run to French class, but I wanted Scott to know that I'm coming to see him play tomorrow," Allison stated, oblivious to his escalating stress over the game.

Praying he'd misheard her, Scott had to double-check, "You are?"

"And we're all going out afterwards. You, me, Lydia, Jackson. It's gonna be great," Allison carried on, as if she hadn't been interrupted. She batted her eyelashes winningly at Mal and said, "I wanted to let _you _know it's a group – thing, so you and Stiles should definitely come, too. If the vein in your forehead can handle it."

"Yeah, do you _have_ a year's worth of Valium? Because 'under the influence of anxiety medication' is the only way I could – Hang on," Mal ended mid-sentence to dubiously repeat, " 'Group – thing'? What d'you mean, 'group – thing'?"

"I meant…'group hangout-type-thing'," she claimed, nervously biting her lip as if she were hiding something. (Scott watched her mouth closely as she did this.)

"Right," Mal conceded reluctantly, narrowing her eyes. "Okay, weirdo. I'm still gonna pass, but thanks."

"Oh, I'm not taking 'No' for an answer," Allison countered adamantly, but she was now running egregiously late, so she said to Scott, "Uh, save me a seat at lunch. I gotta go."

With one last smile at Scott and Mal, she rushed off to class.

"God," he groaned a couple of seconds later, his deer-in-headlights expression diminishing only a bit.

"Yeah, this is the pits," Mal mumbled on his behalf, mentally calculating the odds that he'd live through the weekend.

Any way she sliced it, someone would want Scott's head on a platter by the end of Saturday night. Except now, that list of people included Lydia Martin. If he didn't play, she'd most likely murder him with her bare hands. If he risked everything to stay on first line, Derek would.

Mal couldn't tell which was worse.

* * *

><p>Forty-five minutes later, Stiles was restlessly shuffling his feet by the door to Mal's Psych class, his thumbs wedged under his backpack straps and his fingers drumming out a steady rhythm as he searched for her among the mass of students.<p>

"Hey, can I borrow a pencil?" Mal requested as she strolled out of the room, the very writing utensil she sought tucked securely behind her left ear.

"Yeah, here," Stiles chuckled amiably, removing the pencil and then casually pushing back the strands of Mal's hair that had fallen with it.

Taken aback, she stared at Stiles for five whole seconds, and only then did it register with him what he'd done. "Uh, sorry. Sorry!" he apologized with wide eyes. "I didn't mean to – your pencil was right there. You couldn't see it, so I just thought – but I shouldn't have – I don't know why I did that. Sorry."

"No, it's – it's cool. Really," she assured him, her cheeks feeling unexpectedly warm and her smile, abnormally self-conscious. "I can be a…total space case sometimes. What – um – what else were you gonna do?"

Stiles's laugh was high-pitched and uneasy. "Right. Yes. Exactly. You should…keep better track of your stuff."

"Uh, don't you have Study Hall right now?" Mal asked to change the subject.

"Oh!" he immediately cried, all remnants of discomfort vanishing as he remembered why he'd been waiting for Mal in the first place. "We have to find Scott, I need his super senses. My dad's in the principal's office, and I _gotta _know why," he explained, tugging her by the arm.

Mal lifted an eyebrow but let him drag her through the hallway like a ragdoll. The atmosphere between them had relaxed again, and she felt perfectly satisfied writing their awkward moment off as a passing occurrence.

"Finally cursed Harris out, did ya?" she assumed with a snicker.

"No, smartass, I didn't. Considering the supernatural insanity we now have to sort through, I refuse to die at the hands of a _human_. That's too much irony for me."

"Hah!" Mal snorted viciously. Stiles dropped her arm, and she fell into step with him. "Harris isn't human. He's a demon masquerading as a Chemistry teacher."

Stiles rolled his eyes. "Why do you hate him so much? He didn't make _you_ clap erasers for three days after sneezing _once_ during class."

"What do you mean 'why'?" she snapped back. "You basically just said it, he's a bully. He's always picking on you, and it pisses me off. At least Whittemore takes a break every now and then."

Stiles squinted at her. "Huh, maybe Harris really isn't human. I dunno how else someone could get you to stand up for Jackson."

"Shut up," she mumbled.

"Hey, come here," Stiles beckoned to Scott, having spotted him locking his locker and then the Sheriff discussing something with the principal across the hall. He yanked both Mal and the caught-off-guard werewolf to the closest corner to spy on his dad.

"What?" Scott demanded grumpily.

"Come here. Tell me what they're saying," his nosy best friend ordered in hushed tones. All three of them peeked at the Sheriff, Stiles leaning on Mal and Mal leaning on Scott in what was maybe the least inconspicuous position they could've assumed. Nearly everyone who passed by was glancing at them suspiciously.

"Can you hear the Sheriff?" Mal prodded. "Is this about the girl?"

Scott shushed her, intently focusing his super hearing on the man in question while Stiles tapped his fingers on Mal's shoulders impatiently.

"Curfew because of the body," Scott passed on to his companions.

"Unbelievable," Stiles complained shrilly, lowering his voice when Mal elbowed him. "My dad's out looking for a rabid animal, while the jerk-off who actually killed the girl is just hangin' out, doing whatever he wants."

"Well, you can't exactly tell your dad the truth about Derek," Scott argued.

"It doesn't have to be the whole truth," Mal interjected. "Can't we just tell the Sheriff that Derek essentially kidnapped Allison? That oughta land the son of a bitch at least 3 years in jail."

"That's not enough!" Stiles moaned. After a moment's thought and with a very determined expression, he declared, "We can't tell my dad about you and Derek, but I can do something."

"Like what?" the other two chorused, Mal with apprehension and Scott with an almost tired acceptance.

"Find the other half of the body," Stiles proposed, pulling away before anyone could protest.

"Are you kidding?" Scott called after him uselessly, close to growling as he whirled around to Mal. "Please talk some sense into him. He's being rash again."

She opened her mouth to respond but temporarily couldn't, finding herself in genuine agreement with Stiles for once.

"You think this is a good idea!" Scott exclaimed accusingly, heaving an exasperated sigh and twisting away from her.

His attention shifted further down the hall to Allison, who was shaking hands with a burly lacrosse player Lydia was introducing her to.

"And the crap fest continues," Mal muttered. Shoving Scott in Allison's direction, she said, "Go rescue the poor girl. I'll catch up with you later."

Lydia scrutinized Scott with disdain, and Mal grit her teeth, forcing herself to let it go for once, as she turned and ran in the other direction.

"Stiles, wait up!" she hailed him, sliding to a halt at his side.

"Nothing you say is going to convince me not to do this," he started defensively.

"Good, because I'm with you on this one hundred and ten percent," she stated, quite unfazed. "I know I've been ragging on you a lot lately, but I wanna help this time."

Stiles stopped short, wheeling around to skeptically inquire, "Is _that _so?"

"Hey, whatever it takes to put that 'hairy, werewolf psycho' in jail," she proclaimed in an affectedly masculine register, permitting the smallest smile when Stiles snorted at her impression of him. She was thinking of her brother when she added solemnly, "I mean it, though. We can't let him hurt anyone else."

Stiles gawked at her. "Wow. You're agreeing with me – and it didn't take hours of sweet-talking. Is this the apocalypse? Is the world ending two years early? Hang on. Are you a zombie? Ooh, have you been possessed?"

Putting him in a headlock and rubbing her knuckles against the top of his head, she laughingly replied, "All of the above. So, savor it, kid."

* * *

><p>A week ago, Mal Durant would never have believed she'd be skulking about Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital, or more specifically the morgue in its basement. Then again, she'd never have believed her best friend would soon be capable of turning into a fanged creature during every full moon. Life as a superhuman 10th grader seemed to be full of unpleasant surprises.<p>

When Stiles and Mal met up with Scott at his place after school, he told them he'd found something awful at the Hale house. Upon learning that Allison's jacket had reappeared inside her locker – by Derek's doing – he'd paid the threatening older man a visit, and his enhanced senses were able to pick up on something buried in the yard. His hypothesis was that it was the other half of the dead girl, and now he and his two best friends were hell-bent on confirming it.

Albeit for various reasons.

Scott wanted to protect Allison and be able to play lacrosse again; Stiles loved detective work and was secretly beginning to feel the urge to prove himself now that one of his best friends was a werewolf; and Mal was resolved to keep anyone she could from harm, especially Theo.

A part of her, however latent, was also drawn to the idea of examining a mutilated corpse, but of course, she wasn't actually aware of this yet.

As Stiles parked the Jeep in front of Beacon Hills Hospital, Mal asked disbelievingly, "So what? You're just gonna march right in, Scott? No big deal?"

"Pretty much," he responded without an ounce of concern. "All the doctors have already seen me around."

"And if he has to, he can keep a low profile. Significant upgrade in aural faculties, remember?" Stiles wisecracked, jumping out of the car. Once inside the hospital, he pointed at a sign that indicated where the morgue was and said, "Hey."

Scott straightened out his hoodie, summoning his courage.

After making a split-second decision, Mal held him back to firmly announce, "I'm going with you."

"Wh – No, you're not. You're staying here with me," Stiles balked at her. Pointing at himself and then at her, he said, "Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown. If I'm a sidekick, so are you."

Mal snorted. "I'd prefer it if you wouldn't analogize me to the most inept and least recognized Robin in existence, just because she was the only canonical female. I mean, be fair! Stephanie Brown started a gang war in Gotham City, and I'm still not totally sure Batman wanted her around for any other reason than to get Tim back." Scott glowered at her, so she said, "But that is not important right now…I should go with him. He could use a non-werewolf perspective."

"Dude, come on!" Stiles cried petulantly, demanding cooperation from Scott but receiving none.

"Um, I sorta think it's a good idea. We have to give your dad something solid."

"Then why can't _I _go? I'm totally useless out here," Stiles whined, flailing his arms.

"Because Mal's quieter than you are…and also not hopped up on Adderall at the moment," Scott justified, staring deliberately at Stiles, who'd taken several pills that afternoon. "You can be the look-out. If anyone's coming, text one of us."

"Ugh, all right. Next time, though, _I'm_ going into the morgue with you. Got it?"

"There isn't gonna be a 'next time', Stiles!" Scott hissed, steering Mal toward the swinging door.

"You guys are the worst," Stiles muttered but then grudgingly bid them, "Good luck, I guess."

As expected, the room of corpses was chilly and dark. Scott breathed heavily with unease, but Mal was remarkably calm despite the twenty or so dead people lying less than a stone's throw away within compartments in the wall.

The two kids scanned the labels stuck to each mortuary cold chamber and rested on the one marked, 'Jane Doe, Partial'.

Scott's breathing became panting as he opened the door and drew the sliding table out, so Mal gave his shoulder a supportive squeeze. "You're okay," she comforted from beside him.

"Why isn't this creeping you out?" Scott questioned, thrown by her striking composure. Nodding at the white sheet concealing Jane Doe, he said, "A girl's legs are under this thing. Unattached to the rest of her body like they should be."

"I don't know," Mal answered, biting her lip and wondering why she wasn't the slightest bit on edge. "Maybe I'm just…deeply in denial."

"Sure," Scott granted uncertainly, contemplating the least scarring approach to inspecting the set of legs beneath his trembling hands.

"Here, let me," Mal offered, noticing his tension and gently nudging him to the side. She clutched the sheet corners and unveiled the legs all at once, taking care not to bare too much.

Scott glanced at the nasty bites along the girl's calves and shins and skimmed the large tag with her basic information before turning away, repulsed but oddly more motivated to help than ever. He finally had tangible proof that Derek Hale was a homicidal maniac who deserved to rot in jail.

Mal, on the other hand, was riveted to her spot by the table. For a second time, thoughts regarding the woman's afterlife advanced to the forefront of her mind. _Are you at peace? _

Scott swung around right in time to prevent Mal's fingers from grazing skin, an involuntary reaction on her part.

"What the hell are you doing?!" he whisper-shouted, lightly slapping her wrist.

But it didn't snap Mal out of her trance, instead intensifying her longing for the answers she intuitively knew were within reach. Her instincts were screaming at her to move her hand just a few inches south, that she'd be able to divine something significant through touch. So, she did.

Scott didn't discourage Mal this time, instead watching her warily and readying himself to carry her out of there in the event that someone discovered the two trespassers.

The instant her fingertips met the puncture marks, Mal's surroundings swirled around her, transforming into a different time and place entirely.

* * *

><p><em>Mallory was standing in the middle of a forest. Beacon Hills Preserve, in fact. <em>

_It must've been midnight. The sky was a blackish gray, darkened even further by an extensive mass of clouds, and the hidden waxing moon lit the forest floor poorly. Rain was falling in torrents, while thunder rumbled a few miles away. _

_She couldn't move, rooted to the earth by some invisible force. She might've tried to fight it, but in front of her, she could make out a wolf with shiny sable fur and glowing red eyes. Mallory would've gone rigid if she'd had the ability to do so, but the magnificent and unnerving creature didn't seem to have noticed her._

_The wolf was patrolling the area with the utmost poise and clearly anticipating something – or maybe someone. She howled a minute later, perhaps for her pack. _

_Another howl sounded from somewhere within the preserve, not too far off. The coal-black animal bared her teeth, in what Mallory presumed was a grin, and settled down by a tall tree, resting on her hind legs. _

_Mallory guessed that this was going to be their meeting place, but the wolf's pack mate would be too late for what came next._

_A large and well-built man crept out from behind a tree a couple of yards back, his face cloaked in a bizarre haze incongruous with the rest of the darkness. Mallory realized he was a werewolf preparing to strike only when the moon showed itself for a fleeting moment, and the light shined on a set of claws elevated above his head. _

_Suddenly and much to Mallory's relief, however, he let his hand drop by his side, apparently having changed his mind. That is, until he squatted on the ground and tensed his body to spring at the unsuspecting wolf not five yards away._

_Mallory's efforts to swipe at him were worthless, as she still couldn't move. She struggled and struggled while the menacing man continued to steel himself, but it was as if immovable walls were confining her on all sides. She opened her mouth to warn the wolf and scare her to safety, but she was similarly incapable of uttering a single noise. Everything she tried was hopeless. _

_The werewolf lunged, and Mallory barely shut her eyes in time as he tore his fangs through the animal's fur and sinew._

* * *

><p>"Mal, are you okay? Mal? Mal?!" Scott called from beside her, pushing the rolling table back into the wall and slamming the door shut before fiercely shaking his best friend's shoulders.<p>

Her eyes flew open, pupils darting around uncontrollably, and she jerked away from Scott, thinking she was still back in the woods with the barbaric murderer. She had to blink several times to regain her senses.

"Wh – what happened?" she stammered softly, finally recognizing her surroundings and marginally relaxing.

Scott gaped at her fearfully. "You…blacked out for a minute."

Mal stayed motionless, but this time, of her own volition.

"Are you all right?" Scott asked, studying her closely. "You're sweating a little, and I can hear your heart racing."

She swiped the back of her hand against her forehead, which was, indeed, moist with perspiration. "Yeah. Yes, I'm…good."

But she wasn't. She was the complete opposite of "good".

"D'you…know what that was?" Scott continued concernedly.

Overwhelmed and almost as a reflex, Mal swallowed. Hard. "Um, no, I d – I don't," she faltered, hesitant to describe to him whatever the hell it was she'd just seen. She hadn't the faintest idea herself but refused to accept it as merely the traumatic aftereffect of viewing a dead body so closely.

Scott peered at her knowingly but didn't hound her, trusting that she'd fill him in after she'd gathered her bearings. "Okay, let's go then. I've seen enough," he said disgustedly, conducting her out of the morgue and away from the scores of corpses.

But Mal still felt like she was back in the room with them and exhaled under the fresh weight of crushing sadness. It was almost like someone had hollowed out her chest and swapped her heart with a cement brick. She couldn't understand why she was reacting like this, so out of place for someone who hadn't actually known the black wolf. Why did she care so much? Why had she even seen its death? More importantly, how had she seen it?

She was overcome with anguish and malaise but forced herself, nevertheless, to defer her mounting sense of foreboding to a later time. She needed stay focused on the higher-priority problem: Derek Hale.

Out in the waiting room, Stiles was glaring at Jackson and Lydia as they kissed noisily. Mal remembered Jackson bitching about having to go to the hospital that morning during Chemistry, and she was now regarding the couple with irritation as well. Although this was mostly due to the enervating incident in the morgue. She really didn't have the patience for this, too.

Neither did Scott, for that matter. So, he ripped the menstruation pamphlet Stiles was pretending to read out of his hands.

"Holy God!" the jumpy boy exclaimed in response.

"You _have_ to stop doing this to yourself, Stiles," Mal pleaded tiredly, slipping her hands into the pockets of her red jeans.

He glowered at her knees, stubbornly avoiding her eyes. "How else am I supposed to react to – "

"The scent was the same," the werewolf confirmed, talking over Stiles, who abandoned the topic of Lydia and jumped eagerly out of his seat.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Stiles huffed. "So he did bury the other half of the body on his property?"

"Which means we have proof he killed the girl," Scott finished.

"I say we use –" Stiles started, breaking off when he noticed the sweat on Mal's brow. "Hey, Mal, are you okay? You don't look so good."

She snorted but sent a furtive and silencing look Scott's way. "Gee, thanks for the self-esteem boost, Stiles…I'm fine, it was just a little hot in there. What were you saying?"

Unlike Scott, he didn't immediately drop the subject. "It was hot in the _morgue_? The dead body storage unit kept at a constant thirty-nine degrees? _Really_?"

"_Yes_, Stiles, I was hot. Maybe I'm getting sick. Can we please just concentrate on the _real_ issue here?" she requested, attempting to deflect attention from herself.

Thankfully, Scott didn't tell their other friend the truth. He must've known that would lead to unnecessary questions and potential fussing.

Stiles's face crumpled at her evasiveness, but he yielded anyway, "As you wish. But, Scott, _you_ have to tell me something first. Are you doing this because you want to stop Derek, or because you want to play in the game, and he said you couldn't?"

"There are bite marks on the legs, Stiles – bite marks," Scott murmured gloomily, not a trace of selfishness in his tone.

"He knows this is much bigger than lacrosse now," Mal added gravely. Sharp, white teeth gleamed in her mind's eye.

"Okay. Then we're gonna need a shovel," Stiles readily affirmed. "Or three."

* * *

><p>They'd timed their arrival perfectly, pulling up in front of the Hale house five seconds after Derek had driven off. <em>To the gas station, to the gas station<em>, Mal recited to herself as a sort of soothing mantra. Savage killers had to fuel their cars somehow.

Scott, Stiles, and Mal exited the car with three shovels and a reasonable measure of caution. In case Derek really wasn't gone and instead, waiting to attack.

"Wait, something's different," the superhuman boy alerted his friends, handing Mal the flashlight for her to sweep it over the derelict building and ensure that they had no other company.

"Different how?" Stiles asked as they hastened to the side of the house.

"I don't know," Scott admitted.

"Let's just get this over with," Mal suggested, simultaneously worn-out and wound up. "It's late and I'm freezing."

She'd stopped sweating a while ago and was now experiencing the other temperature extreme, thanks to the flimsy sweater she'd picked out that morning.

"You should probably start dressing more warmly. I have a hunch this won't be the last of our dangerous expeditions," Stiles commented with an unseemly smirk.

He dashed to the Jeep, extracted something through the driver's side window, and returned with a navy blue jacket, holding it out so Mal could slide her arms through the sleeves.

"Thank you," she said gratefully. "You aren't cold?"

"Nah, I've got the hottest blood around," he joked, pulling the zipper up and rubbing her arms to thaw her. "Winters in Russia can't defeat me."

Mal laughed, and the pair proceeded to join Scott.

He'd already set about digging for the body, grunting with the exertion of hurling aside each heavy pile of soil and wet leaves. She placed the flashlight on the ground to illuminate their workspace, and all together, they shoveled in companionable silence.

"This is taking too long," Scott protested nearly half-an-hour later.

"Just keep going," Stiles insisted.

"We're getting closer," Mal stated optimistically.

Continuing to scoop dirt, Scott wondered aloud, "What if he comes back?"

"Then we get the hell out of here," Stiles replied.

"What if he catches us?"

"I have a plan for that."

"Which is?"

"All three of us run in separate directions. Whoever he catches first, too bad," Stiles said thoughtlessly.

"I hate that plan," Scott criticized.

"Definitely your worst one yet," Mal agreed.

Stiles ignored their disapproval, commanding them to "Stop, stop, stop," once he'd hit something firm.

The trio bent down, clearing dirt away to reveal a canvas covering bound with rope. Stiles and Mal labored over the knots, and Scott urged them to hurry.

"We're trying. Did he have to tie the thing in, like, 900 knots?" Stiles squawked.

"I'll do it," Scott said.

The three of them hurriedly undid the remaining knots and at last exposed the terrifying thing atop the canvas: the same sable-haired wolf Mal had seen not three hours before. Except now, the creature was glassy-eyed and dead. Not to mention the lower half of its carcass was unaccounted for.

But even this wasn't what made Mal jump out of her skin.

Stiles and Scott shot out of the hole with cacophonous screams, and after almost doing the same, Mal whirled around to glower at them. "Shut up! Someone's gonna hear you two!"

But Stiles ignored her, pointing at the half-wolf and shouting, "What the hell is that?!"

"It's a wolf, genius," Mal said exasperatedly.

"Yeah! I can see that," Stiles snapped and then shrieked at Scott, "I thought you said you smelled blood, as in human blood!"

"I told you guys something was different."

"This doesn't make sense," Stiles asserted, training his stare on the unearthed animal and failing to catch the light of comprehension dawning in Mal's eyes.

"We gotta get out of here," Scott instructed his friends.

"Yeah. Okay, help me cover this up," Stiles said in agreement, reaching out for the shovel and then pausing.

Scott looked at him and asked, "What's wrong?"

Stiles prodded Mal – who reluctantly dragged her gaze away from the wolf – and pointed at a plant a couple of feet away. "You guys see that flower?"

"What about it?" the other two replied in unison.

"I think it's wolfsbane."

"What's that?" Scott questioned with furrowed eyebrows.

"Uh – haven't you ever seen The Wolf Man?" Scott shook his head, so Stiles went on, "Lon Chaney Jr.? Claude Rains?" Scott exhaled, moderately put out, and Stiles practically shouted, "The original classic werewolf movie?"

"No! What?"

"You are so unprepared for this," Stiles carped at Scott, bypassing the hole and yanking the flower out of the ground, only to discover that it was attached to yet another rope.

"You know, according to Greek mythology, Theseus – the founder of Athens – was nearly poisoned by wolfsbane," Mal informed Scott, as Stiles began circling the pit to gather all of the cord. "His father was the king at the time, and he'd married the sorceress Medea, who realized Theseus was her husband's son and rightful heir to the throne, upon his return to Athens. She was afraid he'd be chosen over her own son, so she poisoned his wine. Fortunately, the king recognized him before it was too late."

Scott was watching Stiles and only half-listening but he asked anyway, "Mal, what does any of that have to do with me?"

"Uh, not much, I guess. I mean it _is_ just a myth, but – listen, aconite is a bona fide poison. Historically, it's been used to kill wolves, and considering you're a _werewolf_ now, I'd stay far away from that stuff if I were you," she cautioned, gesturing at the plant currently held by Stiles, who was paying absolutely no attention to her warning.

Scott nodded at her before looking back down the hole. "Guys," he said, dumbfounded, and his companions came up behind him.

"Holy –" Stiles uttered, too shocked to end the sentence, for below them lay the head and torso of a young woman, the one Scott had stumbled across the night he was bitten.

Mal simply blinked, suddenly understanding why she'd hallucinated a wolf back at the morgue and not a girl. They were one in the same.

What she'd seen was a memory.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Hey, friends. Hope you enjoyed the latest installment of "Headlights". Sorry it took me longer than usual. College started up again last week, so I've been pretty busy settling in and such. And that means I probably won't be updating as regularly, so I apologize in advance. In an ideal world, this would be my job (although if it were, I probably wouldn't do it since I'm such a lazy asshole when it comes to stuff I should be doing.) Anyway, don't worry, I'll post new chapters as soon as they're ready. Hand to God! **

** Also, all the links you might wanna look at are on my profile, including faceclaims and a Polyvore.**


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